Fall 2021

Permian Dust and Its Relevance to Modern Climate Change

Lynn Soreghan, University of Oklahoma

Dust/loess is well known as both an archive of climate and agent of climate change for Earth’s recent record. But dust deposits are increasingly recognized in Earth’s deep-time record, especially from the Permian. Thick dust deposits occur in the U.S., and elsewhere (e.g. France) along the paleoequator. Dust deposition pulsed on a glacial-interglacial timescale, and was sourced from regions that included the equatorial Central Pangaean Mountains. Notably, the voluminous atmospheric dust stimulated productivity in the marine and terrestrial biosphere, thus affecting carbon cycling and source-rock development. Recent recognition of extraordinarily thick dust deposits in the Permian of Oklahoma have spawned efforts for an international research coring campaign to recover the longest continuous record of climate ever attempted, with the potential for abundant auxiliary science.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Repurposing a paradigm: Enhanced chemical weathering as an emerging Negative Emission Technology

Grace Andrews, University of Southampton

Climate change is impacting humans and the environment around the world. To meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 2∘C by 2100, Negative Emission Technologies, which actively remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, are required. In this talk, Dr. Andrews will discuss Enhanced Weathering, a cutting-edge climate change mitigation technology developed from decades-long research into chemical weathering, the Earth’s natural process for regulating atmospheric CO2 levels. She will share results from experiments and pilot studies of Enhanced Weathering conducted in both agricultural and coastal settings.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Case Studies in Computing for Earth and Environmental Sciences

Shantenu Jha, Rutgers University

In this talk, we will provide a non-specialists introduction to high-performance computing (HPC) and discusshow HPC has been applied to several important areas of earth and environmental sciences. The casestudies include seismic tomography, the IPCC AR6, and scalable high-resolution image analysis. Examples of HPC middleware and hardware platforms available to the community will be discussed.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Lab on a bit: 3D printing customized hydrodynamic electrochemical devices

Glenn O'Neil, Montclair State University

3D-printed electrochemical devices have gained tremendous attention because they are highly customizable platforms for analysis and energy storage that can be produced using simple, inexpensive components. A major advantage of 3D printing is that once a digital design file is produced, a designer can send the design file of a functioning device anywhere in the world over the internet, and the device can be made at the point of use. The power of this approach is that it enables non-expert users to fabricate real devices and make measurements to enable citizen science. Here I will discuss my group’s recent efforts to develop tools for making trace measurements that can be fabricated on-demand using 3D-printing.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Systematic over-crediting in California’s forest carbon offsets program

Grayson Badgley, Columbia University

Forest carbon offsets are increasingly prominent in corporate and government “net zero” emission strategies, but face growing criticism about their efficacy. California’s forest offsets program is frequently promoted as a high-quality approach that improves on the failures of earlier efforts. I will demonstrate how ecological and statistical shortcomings in the design of California’s forest offset protocol generate offset credits that do not reflect real climate benefits. I will use these findings to discuss how protocol designs with easily exploitable rules can undermine policy objectives and highlight the need for stronger governance in carbon offset markets.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Deep Decarbonization: How Do We Achieve a Just Transition?

Sacoby Wilson, University of Maryland

Dr. Sacoby Wilson is Associate Professor with the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Health and Director of the Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice, and Health (CEEJH). Dr. Wilson has 15 years of experience as an environmental health scientist in the areas of exposure science, environmental justice, environmental health disparities, community-engaged research including crowd science and community-based participatory research (CBPR), water quality analysis, air pollution studies, built environment, industrial animal production, climate change, community resiliency and sustainability. He works primarily in partnership with community-based organizations to study and address environmental justice and health issues and translate research to action. In September 2021, Dr. Wilson was honored by the Maryland League of Conservation Voters which bestowed on him the John V. Kabler Memorial Award, which is presented yearly to the state’s most prominent environmental leaders.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Mega-Herbivores, Plants and Soils

Jennifer Adams Krumins, Montclair State University

Ecosystem and plant ecologists understand that herbivory can have a profound influence on primary production and plant community structure. This can be seen in mass outbreaks of insect herbivores or the grazing activity of ungulate herds. Likewise, the same ecologists understand that plants interact closely in a bidirectional relationship with soil organisms and the ecosystem properties they moderate. Therefore, logically we hypothesize that herbivory will have either a direct effect on soil communities and their functioning, or at minimum, an indirect effect on the soils via the plants they support. My sabbatical research included participation in multiple programs studying the effects of herbivory on soils in major manipulative herbivory experiments. The outcomes of these projects with respect to direct and indirect effects of herbivore grazing show almost no consistent effect on soil communities or their functioning. This paradox has led to an extensive collaboration of researchers and a recently funded NSF grant to consolidate data and resolve the mechanisms that seem intractable within individual studies.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Giving beets a chance: Heavy metal accumulation in mycorrhizal and non-mycorrhizal crops at an urban farm

Eric Vukicevich, Connecticut College

Urban, community farming seeks to provide access to affordable, healthy, culturally-appropriate produce via cooperatively-run growing spaces. However, the threat of contaminated soils so common to older cities can limit the scale of production and/or necessitates costly remediation efforts. Although there are rough guidelines outlining at what level a soil is unsafe for growing food, there are many uncertainties as to which crops might be safe in soils with slightly elevated (but below guidelines) levels of contaminants and to what degree soil biology affects uptake. We grew mycorrhizal and non-mycorrhizal root, leafy green, and fruit crops representing five different plant families at an urban community farm with low and moderately high levels of heavy metal contamination. Preliminary results will be discussed.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Detecting perturbations in seawater carbonate chemistry with the δ44/40Ca-δ88/86Sr multi-proxy

Jiuyuan Wang, Yale University

Ocean acidification is one predictable consequence of rising atmospheric CO2. Understanding how the seawater carbonate chemistry changed during historical climate changes will help us better predict the ocean’s response to the present one. In this talk, I will introduce a novel means for tracking changes of seawater carbonate chemistry: the δ44/40Ca-δ88/86Sr multi-proxy. I will exploit emergent properties of δ44/40Ca and δ88/86Sr systems from two extreme climatic events: the Cretaceous Oceanic Anoxic Event 1a (OAE1a, ~120 Ma) and the Neoproterozoic Marinoan deglaciation (~635Ma).

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Blue Crab in the New York area as an Indicator for Climate Change

Adelle Molina, Stony Brook University

In the northeast US, winters are getting warmer, shorter, and milder due to climate change. It is hypothesized that populations of some species near their northern range limit may experience elevated population growth rates owing to lower mortality in winter, higher growth rates in summer, and the synergistic relationship between these physiological processes. Blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) in New York estuaries are close to their northern range edge and are potentially climate “winners” in this region. To provide advice to managers, we monitored blue crab populations in a coastal, lagoonal estuary and used a combined modeling approach to simulate the possible effects of warming on these populations.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

HABs at the shore: Harmful algal blooms in Monmouth County coastal lakes

Jason Earl Adolf, Monmouth University

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) have had increasing impacts in fresh, brackish and marine waters in recent decades. Small lakes, reservoirs, and ponds common in developed regions are particularly susceptible to cyanobacterial HAB impacts because of high rates of nutrient delivery associated with urbanized watersheds and high population density. The coastal lakes dotting the shores of Monmouth County have experienced degraded water quality and recurrent HABs in recent years. My research group, the PHABLab (Phytoplankton and Harmful Algal Bloom Lab) has examined coastal lakes’ water quality and HABs for the last three years, including the formation of a new participatory citizen science lake monitoring program called CLONet. Here, I will discuss our program and findings in the context of other HABs found in NJ and beyond!

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Water Utility Services: Understanding the Tension Between Viability and Affordability

Daniel Van Abs, Rutgers University

Nationally, the cost of drinking water and sewer utility services has been increasing faster than the consumer price index (inflation) since 1980, propelled by more stringent environmental standards, service area expansion, and repairs for aging infrastructure. These pressures are not abating, and in many ways are increasing. The result is that utilities need more revenue, but an increasing number of households face utility costs that are unaffordable. Shutting off these customers is counterproductive for those low-income households (somewhat like a debtors prison, where you suffer for an inability to pay), society at large, and even the utilities (which face public opposition and administrative costs). A new report sponsored by Jersey Water Works, a statewide consortium focused on water infrastructure issues, and financed through New Jersey Future, a statewide “smart growth” organization, shows the geographic pattern and severity of the issue.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM