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Accomplishments
Ecology
Work during the past year on carbon sequestration in Southwestern rangelands demonstrates that dryland regions are changing mosaics of woody plant classes whose trends through time are logistically difficult to track with traditional ground based techniques. Fieldwork linked to remote sensing imagery offers the capability to monitor and track changes in aboveground carbon pools over large dryland regions and at frequent intervals.
Polar Climate
Evidence of a temperature regulation mechanism at high latitudes related to sea-surface temperatures was found, which might explain the lower rate of observed arctic warming than predicted by climate models. Researchers also found a strong feedback from biosphere albedo in a simple model of the Earth's climate system. Finally, observed trends in reanalysis products were compared with previous claims of tropospheric warming causing some of the rise in tropopause height in the same data and showed that no warming existed in the data.
Climate Modeling
Researchers published a simple, nonlinear climate model study called a Dynamical Area Fraction Model (DAFM), which laid the basic theoretical framework for developing simple nonlinear-coupled dynamic models. Two subsequent experiments with this revised model suggested the domination of negative feedback from the hydrologic cycle on the climate regulation: the active hydrological cycle greatly reduced the global climate temperature, despite powerful positive hydrological feedbacks like the ice-albedo and hydrological greenhouse feedbacks. These results contrast with anthropogenic explanations of climate change that rely heavily on assumptions of positive feedbacks from the hydrological cycle.
Expansive Soils
Data from three trenches dug into the Pierre Shale in the northern Front Range show that reflectance spectroscopy is a viable technique to detect the swell potential of smectitic soils and will provide results in seconds rather than days and at a significantly lower cost than standard methods.
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Education and Student Opportunities
Remote sensing is not a discipline in itself, but rather a major, evolving tool applicable to studies of the earth involving the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, and the solid earth. CSES acts as a focus for research, campus-wide, in the use of remote sensing for global geosciences studies. So far, master’s and Ph.D. candidates from the departments of Anthropology, Geography, Geological Sciences, Electrical Engineering, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Interdepartmental Geophysics Program have carried out thesis research in CSES.
CSES Facilities
The CSES facilities include approximately 8000 sq. ft. of lab and office space completely refurbished in 1994 with support from the W. M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles, California. CSES occupies the 2nd floor South and West wings of the Ekeley Science building in the heart of the CU campus. CSES also contains a 24-seat classroom for teaching, including 10 Windows workstations.
Future of CSES
Because of the retirement of CSES director Alexander F.H. Goetz in 2006, CSES will be evaluated by CIRES for possible reorientation under a new director.
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