ENVS News

Postdoctoral fellows and graduate students from Professor Mark Hernandez's environmental engineering lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder will travel to the Gulf Coast this week to begin studying the effect of this summer's oil spill on air quality along impacted shores.

The team will collect air and water samples from pristine shorelines as well as coastal state parks where cleanup operations have not yet begun. Faculty and students plan to take additional samples during various phases of the cleanup operations over the next several months.

The multi-seasonal survey is funded by a $168,886 rapid-response grant from the National Science Foundation. The study is using novel toxicology assessment tools that were adapted for air quality monitoring by co-investigators Kevin McCabe and Alina Handorean, postdoctoral fellows who specialize in applying molecular biology to environmental applications.

Researchers will try to determine the extent to which the large volume of hydrocarbons released into the Gulf of Mexico by the spill are becoming aerosolized as they weather, and what potential health risks they may present to cleanup workers.

"A growing body of research suggests that emergency response crews suffer from various respiratory disorders following floods and other large-scale carbon inputs to brackish and freshwater bodies," said Hernandez.

Hernandez and his students collected air and water samples in New Orleans floodwaters in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, but they did not find a significant level of airborne pathogens.

"This study will go much further in that we will not only identify and quantify the microbes present in the air, we will also attempt to determine their potential for negative health effects using model cell cultures in our laboratory," Hernandez said.

The study will be conducted in conjunction with the Division of Natural Sciences and Public Health at Dillard University, with which CU-Boulder has a well-established collaborative relationship in environmental microbiology.

The grant is one of two RAPID grants awarded to CU-Boulder faculty in response to the Gulf oil spill. The other grant, which is being led by professors Karl Linden and Fernando Rosario-Ortiz, focuses on the environmental fate of chemical dispersants that were used in the cleanup operations.

NEWS SOURCE: CU-Boulder News Center

A thick blanket of yellow haze hovering over Houston as a result of chemical pollution produced by manufacturing petroleum products may be getting a little bit thinner, according to a new study.

But the new findings -- which have implications for petrochemical-producing cities around the world -- come with a catch, says a team of scientists from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, a joint institute of the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The problem is that industry still significantly underestimates the amounts of reactive chemicals being released into the air, according to airplane measurements made by the research team as part of the study. Inaccuracies in the reporting of emissions pose big challenges for the reduction and regulation of emissions coming from petrochemical plants. The emissions are important to monitor, because some chemicals released from the plants react to form ground-level ozone that can be harmful to human health and agricultural crops.

"Emissions may have decreased some, but there's still a long way to go," said study author Joost de Gouw, a CIRES atmospheric scientist. "And the emission inventories by industry were not any better in 2006 than they were in 2000."

States that regularly suffer from ozone problems like Texas are required by the federal government to scientifically model what happens during air pollution episodes and develop plans for mitigation. For that to happen effectively, modelers need good inventories, says the research team.

"Initial inventories are not based on measurements. They're based on estimates," said de Gouw. "When you go back to verify those estimates, we find they're not very accurate."

To check on those estimates, lead study author Rebecca Washenfelder of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory and CIRES, along with de Gouw, took to the plumes in an aircraft, the NOAA WP-3D, outfitted with an array of air quality measuring instruments. The plane flew through emissions over Houston as part of the second Texas Air Quality Study in 2006, sampling air for signs of ingredients of the chemical reaction that makes ozone, including nitrogen oxides and reactive hydrocarbons.

Washenfelder, de Gouw and their study colleagues compared these measurements with data taken during similar flyovers from the first Texas Air Quality Study in 2000 and another flight in 2002. They then compared those measurements against emissions inventories for each year. In all cases, the industry-reported inventories -- which are supplied to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency -- didn't agree with the measured amounts of pollutants.

The conflicting data is likely a problem of estimation and general industry practice. "There are tens of thousands of valves and fittings installed throughout the plants in most cases with an assumed -- not measured -- leak rate for each," Washenfelder said.

But industry is taking steps to lessen ozone-causing emissions, and repairs to petrochemical plants may have contributed to recent emission declines. Washenfelder and de Gouw found that the concentrations of ethene and propene -- which both contribute to ozone formation -- dropped by 52 percent and 48 percent respectively between 2000 and 2006.

The two scientists see the study as a wake-up call for emissions monitoring.

"There are a lot of discussions with the petrochemical industry on how to measure these things instead of relying on estimates," said de Gouw. "I think the No. 1 issue here is awareness. As soon as industry is aware that there could be emissions problems down the road, they can figure out how to fix them at lower cost."

The study been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. Funding for the project came from NOAA Air Quality, NOAA Climate Research and Modeling Program, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship.

A podcast on the study can be heard at colorado.edu/news/podcasts/.

NEWS SOURCE: CU-Boulder News Center

The University of Colorado at Boulder and the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden today named Michael L. Knotek as director of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, or RASEI.

Knotek brings more than 35 years of experience to RASEI, a joint institute between CU-Boulder and NREL. Since 2001 he has served as a consultant specializing in transitions and creating new research directions in agency and institutional programs, projects and major research facilities. He also has been involved in strategic planning and project management for multidisciplinary and multi-institutional programs and facilities, including DOE biological programs, high-performance computing, national facilities such as synchrotrons, environmental research and many aspects of energy science and technology.

Knotek, one of the nation's most experienced leaders in multidisciplinary energy research, will focus on renewable energy research within RASEI, one of the world's leading university and federal laboratory partnerships.

"The appointment of Dr. Knotek continues our tradition of attracting the highest quality leadership, and will foster new opportunities for Colorado's scientific and private sector communities to collaborate on new energy solutions," said CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano.

Knotek will have overall responsibility for management of RASEI's CU-Boulder and NREL research fellows and private-sector Leadership Council.

"The breadth and depth of experience and knowledge that Dr. Knotek brings to RASEI is exactly the kind of leadership we need to help shape the nation's energy future," said NREL Director Dan Arvizu.

Knotek previously served as senior science and technology adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Energy; the distinguished science executive at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill.; chief technology officer with the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio; and chairman of the National Synchrotron Light Source research facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y.

He also served as associate laboratory director for environmental and energy sciences at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., and as special assistant to the director at Lockheed Martin Energy Research Corp. in Oak Ridge, Tenn. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society.

RASEI is advancing solutions for producing energy economically from low-carbon sources to meet the global energy challenge. For more information about RASEI visit rasei.colorado.edu.

NREL is the DOE's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, comprised of the Midwest Research Institute, Battelle Memorial Institute, CU-Boulder, Colorado State University, Colorado School of Mines, MIT and Stanford. For more information visit www.nrel.gov.

Contacts:
Malinda Miller-Huey, CU, 303-492-3115
George Douglas, NREL, 303-275-4096
Elaine Tucci, RASEI, 303-492-8530

NEWS SOURCE: CU-Boulder News Center

Summer weather in the mountains (and not dying)
By Jenn Fields

The first time I thought I was going to die that day was when the rock I pulled on came off in my hand.

I was 1,500 feet up Skywalker Couloir, unroped. The direct finish up South Arapaho Peak was only kind of in. I was the first to venture onto the rock to scramble to the final section of snow.

After a big exhale as I pushed the rock back into place, I called down: "It's kind of rotten."

It was late in the season. We'd started late that morning. Companion Ben -- who had just moved here from Connecticut to marry friend Genny --- wasn't acclimatized. Though fit, he was moving slow.

We were breaking the rules during monsoon season.

A monsoon is just a change of wind patterns, Joel Gratz told me. Gratz is a meteorologist and the pontificator behind Coloradopowderforecast.com. In mid and late summer, he says, winds change to bring moist air from Mexico (from the Gulf and Pacific) to Colorado.

Read entire story

NEWS SOURCE: Boulder Daily Camera

An international science team involving the University of Colorado at Boulder that is working on the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling project hit bedrock July 27 after two summers of work, drilling down more than 1.5 miles in an effort to help assess the risks of abrupt future climate change on Earth.

Led by Denmark and the United States, the team recovered ice from the Eemian interglacial period from about 115,000 to 130,000 years ago, a time when temperatures were 3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit above today's temperatures. During the Eemian -- the most recent interglacial period on Earth -- there was substantially less ice on Greenland, and sea levels were more than 15 feet higher than today.

While three previous ice cores drilled in Greenland in the last 20 years recovered ice from the Eemian, the deepest layers were compressed and folded, making the data difficult to interpret. The new effort, known as NEEM, has allowed researchers to obtain thicker, more intact annual ice layers near the bottom of the core that are expected to contain crucial information about how Earth's climate functions, said CU-Boulder Professor Jim White, lead U.S. investigator on the project.

"Scientists from 14 countries have come together in a common effort to provide the science our leaders and policy makers need to plan for our collective future," said White, who directs CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and is an internationally known ice core expert. "I hope that NEEM is a foretaste of the kind of cooperation we need for the future, because we all share the world."

Annual ice layers formed over millennia in Greenland by compressed snow reveal information on past temperatures and precipitation levels, as well as the contents of ancient atmospheres, said White. Ice cores from previous drilling efforts revealed temperature spikes of more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit in just 50 years in the Northern Hemisphere.

White said the new NEEM ice cores will more accurately portray past changes in temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations in the Eemian, making it the best analogue for future climate change on Earth. An international study released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last week showed the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest on record for the planet.

The NEEM project involves 300 scientists and students and is led by Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, director of the University of Copenhagen's Centre of Ice and Climate. The United States portion of the effort is funded by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs.

The two meters of ice just above bedrock from NEEM -- which is located at one of the most inaccessible parts of the Greenland ice sheet -- go beyond the Eemian interglacial period into the previous ice age and contains rocks and other material that have not seen sunlight for hundreds of thousands of years, said White. The researchers expect the cores to be rich in DNA and pollen that can tell scientists about the plants that existed in Greenland before it became covered with ice.

The cores samples are being studied in detail using a suite of measurements, including stable water isotopes that reveal information about temperature and moisture changes back in time. The team is using state-of-the art laser instruments to measure the isotopes, as well as atmospheric gas bubbles trapped in the ice and ice crystals to understand past variations in climate on a year-by-year basis, said White.

As part of the project, the researchers want to determine how much smaller the Greenland ice sheet was 120,000 years ago when the temperatures were higher than present, as well as how much and how fast the Greenland ice sheet contributed to sea level. "We expect that our findings will increase our knowledge on the future climate system and increase our ability to predict the speed and final height of sea level rise during the Eemian," said Dahl-Jensen.

The NEEM facility includes a large dome, a drilling rig to extract 3-inch in diameter ice cores, drilling trenches, labs and living quarters. The United States is leading the laboratory analysis of atmospheric gases trapped in bubbles within the cores, including greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane.

Other nations involved in NEEM include Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Other U.S. institutions involved in the effort include Oregon State University, Penn State, the University of California, San Diego and Dartmouth College.

Other CU-Boulder participants include postdoctoral researcher Vasilii Petrenko and doctoral student Tyler Jones. White also is a professor in CU-Boulder's geological sciences department.

The vast majority of climate scientists attribute rising temperatures on Earth to increased greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere as a result of human activity. In 2008 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that temperatures on Earth could rise by as much as 10 degrees F above today's temperatures in the next century, primarily due to atmospheric greenhouse gases.

More information on the international NEEM deep drilling project can be obtained either by emailing White or NEEM Field Operation Manager J.P. Steffensen.

NEWS SOURCE: CU-Boulder News Center

Forest fires that have burned thousands of acres near Durango over the last several years may be responsible for unlocking the mercury trapped beneath the soil in the San Juan National Forest and allowing it to wash into Vallecito Reservoir northeast of Durango, according to preliminary findings by a University of Colorado at Boulder engineering professor.

Vallecito is one of five reservoirs in the Four Corners region under fish consumption advisories due to elevated mercury levels in fish. The reservoir is used for recreational fishing, irrigation and water sports.

Professor Joseph Ryan in the department of civil, environmental and architectural engineering at CU-Boulder has been studying the issue of mercury mobility in southwestern Colorado with the Mountain Studies Institute in Silverton for the last one and a half years. Recently, he and his colleagues received a $690,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to expand on the work.

Coal-fired power plants in the Four Corners region are believed to be the primary source of mercury in La Plata and Montezuma counties. The mercury would be harmless if not for the sulfate-reducing bacteria beneath the soil that turns it into methylmercury, a toxic substance that is readily absorbed in the fatty tissues of organisms, according to Ryan.

When a large forest fire such as the 2002 Missionary Ridge Fire burns through an area containing mercury from atmospheric deposition, it appears to make matters worse by oxidizing sulfur molecules that bind the mercury in organic matter in the soil. This causes the mercury to be released and allows it to be more readily converted to methylmercury.

"We think the Missionary Ridge fire might have resulted in the fish consumption advisories for mercury that are now in effect at Vallecito Reservoir," Ryan said.

Ryan's initial research on the mercury problem was funded by university sources, including the CU-Boulder Outreach Committee, Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and College of Engineering and Applied Science. The new grant will allow for more detailed studies, with $150,000 of the grant going directly to the Mountain Studies Institute.

Ryan will collaborate with Koren Nydick of the Mountain Studies Institute, George Aiken at the U.S. Geological Survey and Kathryn Nagy of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Students from CU-Boulder and Fort Lewis College will participate in the studies, which will include analyzing soil samples both before and after various prescribed burns planned in the area.

The project is one of several technical studies undertaken as part of the San Juan Collaboratory, a program established to facilitate research that serves the needs of rural southwestern Colorado and expand learning opportunities for Fort Lewis College students by creating a bridge with CU-Boulder.

For more information on the Colorado Fish Tissue study and fish consumption advisories, go to http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/wq/FishCon/index.html.

Contacts:
Joseph Ryan, 303-492-0772
Carol Rowe, 303-492-7426

NEWS SOURCE: CU-Boulder News Center

Between the Gulf oil spill and increasing political pressure to reduce carbon emissions, the environment is on everyone's minds. Education-Portal recently spoke with Dr. Max Boykoff about climate change, environmental research and how college students can make a difference.

Read entire interview.

NEWS SOURCE: EducationPortal.com

By Clint Talbott

Disease in humans and animals has been rising while human use of agricultural fertilizer has skyrocketed. A team of scientists led by researchers at the University of Colorado cites evidence that those two trends are related, but they say much is still unknown.

The relationship between “nutrient enrichment” and disease involves a “fair amount of smoke and a little bit of fire, though how much fire we don’t know yet,” says Alan R. Townsend, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at CU.

He and his colleagues hope for more widespread research on this topic, which has large implications for human and ecosystem health.

Read entire article.

NEWS SOURCE: Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

By Katie Lindberg, For the Colorado Daily

John McKenzie's got farming in his blood; in fact, it's been in his family since his great-grandfather Neil D. McKenzie bought 80 acres of farmland out past Jay Road in 1893.

Since then, the Boulder farm has been passed down through the generations -- and now McKenzie's doing his part to help educate forward-thinking University of Colorado students about a decidedly old-school vocation.

This summer, McKenzie -- who teaches economics and statistics at Front Range Community College -- is leading a class at CU called "Topics in Environmental Policy: Agriculture and the Environment."

Read entire story

NEWS SOURCE: Colorado Daily

by Allen Best

For just a brief period of civilization, humans have tapped the dense energy of fossil fuels. “Sweet perfume,” Carbondale’s Randy Udall, a consulting energy analyst and one of the nation's leading activists in promoting energy sustainability, called them at a recent panel discussion in Denver. “These fossil fuels are magical.”

But what comes next? We can’t continue burning coal, petroleum and natural gas the way we have. Atmospheric accumulations of greenhouse gases have doubled since the 1980s – and now the Chinese, Indians and others want treadmills and leaf blowers, too. Even if you pooh-pooh global warming theory, evidence has been growing of the impending shortages of fossil fuels.

“You have to ask yourself what BP was doing drilling to 18,000 feet,” said Udall, alluding to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. “It’s because oil is getting scarce.” Still, Udall and other speakers at the event organized by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science agreed that we won’t stop using fossil fuels anytime soon. Instead, they described protracted and difficult energy transitions. Those transitions will, they agreed, depend in part upon local initiative.

But they also agreed that it’s an exciting time in Colorado, because of cutting-edge policies, and also abundant wind, solar and other renewable resources, as well as its considerable store of natural gas.

Historian Patty Limerick of the University of Colorado warned against romanticizing about the pre-fossil fuels past. Use of fossil fuels emancipated women, farmers and many others from enormous drudgery. Gas-fueled cars made city streets, once covered with manure, far more pleasant. She also pointed out how much the recreation economy of the New West depends upon large uses of energy.

Read entire story

NEWS SOURCE: The Durango Telegraph