Earth Lab's Environmental Data Science weekly seminar series

Title:  Impacts of global change and on tropical ecosystem functioning
Speaker:  Dr. Imma Oliveras,  IRD (France), ECI (University of Oxford), State University of Mato Grosso

Abstract:
One of the biggest challenges in biosphere science is to understand how ecosystems are responding to global changes, such as climate change, land use change and changes in disturbance regimes. This challenge is particularly acute for tropical ecosystems because of their high biodiversity, importance for global biogeochemical cycles, and still poorly understood ecophysiological functions. This talk will give a brief overview of some of the state-of-art on the impacts of global change on tropical ecosystem energy budgets, biogeochemistry cycles, and ecological function.

Speaker Bio: 
Dr Imma Oliveras is Research Director at the Institute of Recherche pour le Developpement (France), Senior Scientist at the Environmental Change Institute (University of Oxford) and visiting professor at the State University of Mato Grosso. She leads the Disturbance Ecology and Global Change Group, and her main research addresses the vulnerability and resilience of ecosystems to global change. She is interested on how changes in abiotic conditions - particularly extreme droughts and altered fire regimes- affect plant form and function, and how this aggregated to diversity and ecosystem functioning.

ESOC coffee hour occurs weekly from 9-10am Wednesdays in the ESOC Reading Room (Ekeley W230). Please email Claire Waugh (waughc@colorado.edu) for information.

ESOC researchers, post-docs and graduate students gather for conversation and to discuss research. Occasional guest speakers are invited to give short presentations on topics of interest.

Understanding flood risk from space: opportunities to adapt to changing risk and catalyze climate justice
Beth Tellman, Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona, School of Geography, Development, and Environment  

Floods affect more people than any other hazard, and the frequency and magnitude of exposure is growing with demographic and climatic changes. Yet the ability to predict and monitor floods from local to global scales remains a challenge and limits access to financial protection for vulnerable populations. The increasing availability, frequency, and spatio-temporal resolution of satellite data provides new opportunities to monitor floods locally and globally. Advances in cloud computing and machine learning techniques enable increasingly accurate flood event monitoring by fusing observations from multiple sensors. I will show how these new methods and data can improve our ability to understand and adapt to flood risk from global to local scales. This talk will demonstrate how improved flood observations yield insight into where populations are moving into flood plains, inform decisions to relocate refugee camps, underpin innovative index insurance schemes in Colombia and Bangladesh. Beyond adaptation, satellite-based flood data could be used to catalyze climate justice. I’ll show examples from recent work in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, where we are partnering with lawyers from Texas Rio Grande Legal Aide and community-based organizations to co-produce flood history data. Lawyers hope to use these data to hold FEMA accountable to doling out recovery funds for exposed populations and challenge infrastructure investments that protect wealthier communities from flooding at the expense of increased exposure to others.

This is part of a regular C-SEF Webinar series, to build community and brainstorm research ideas. Everyone is welcome.

Chemistry of Organic Compounds in the Atmosphere and Indoor Air
Paul Ziemann,
ANYL faculty, CU Boulder

"Laboratory studies provide much of the fundamental data on reaction kinetics, products, and mechanisms that are needed to understand atmospheric and indoor air chemistry and to develop models that are used to establish air quality regulations and predict the effects of human activities. Research in my laboratory focuses primarily on environmental chamber studies of the atmospheric chemistry of organic compounds emitted from natural and anthropogenic sources and the physical and chemical processes by which oxidized organic reaction products form aerosol particles. In addition to this we have conducted a number of collaborative studies of indoor air chemistry at CU. In this talk I will provide a brief overview of recent research in my lab for the purpose of informing first-year chemistry graduate students."

Prior to the seminar we will announce the winners of the ANYL Best Student & Postdoc Paper Contest and present awards!

For the second half of the seminar time block there will be a meeting of ANYL faculty and first year students.

A CIRES Early-Career Assembly (CECA, formerly CGA) Appreciation Breakfast will take place on Tuesday, September 12 from 8:30-10 am in the CIRES Fellows Room (Ekeley S274). 

All CIRES graduate students and post-docs are invited to stop by to grab some breakfast or stay to enjoy some friendly conversations.  This will be an opportunity to take a break at the start of the semester and meet up with others across CIRES. Coffee, bagels, and doughnuts will be provided in appreciation of all of the great work you do! RSVPs are not required. 

ESOC coffee hour occurs weekly from 9-10am Wednesdays in the ESOC Reading Room (Ekeley W230). Please email Claire Waugh (waughc@colorado.edu) for information.

ESOC researchers, post-docs and graduate students gather for conversation and to discuss research. Occasional guest speakers are invited to give short presentations on topics of interest.

Presented by: 

Dr. Caitlin Rottler (South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center, University of Oklahoma)

ABSTRACT:

The Ogallala Aquifer (OA) underlies about 111 million acres of Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, including about 1.9 million acres of Tribal lands and 2.9 million acres of federal lands. Water from the aquifer is vital to regional aquatic, riparian, range, and agricultural ecosystems. Management of the OA presents challenges in various forms, as it is a common resource that crosses multiple state lines and is subject to an array of Tribal, Federal, State, and Municipal regulations. Aquifer depletion, especially in a region expected to become hotter and drier with climate change, presents a growing problem, threatening both natural and managed ecosystems.

One way to begin approaching the complex issue of understanding and managing the Ogallala Aquifer at the regional scale is to address the problem of multiple large, disparate datasets that, as a result of being difficult to locate, are not easily combined and synthesized in a way that supports science-based decision-making and communication between and among stakeholders. The Ogallala Data Directory Project worked to identify datasets and make them easier to access with less labor-intensive searching by creating a metadata library with records corresponding to datasets located in various places online.

Project outputs include a fully searchable website housing metadata records that assist in cataloging datasets by geographic scope of coverage, time period, and data type. Metadata entries are included for hydrologic, agricultural, and ecological data. The directory is hosted with the Ogallala Water Coordinated Agriculture Project data portal that has been built through ongoing collaboration with the Colorado State University Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory.

Register here: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEpdO6hpzwqEtap6k84m6_pvshey...

Please join the CMC for their monthly meeting. Join by Google Meet or phone: https://meet.google.com/vee-dwjy-cji?hs=224 or (US) +1 502-443-0399 PIN: 491275827

On September 19 between 11:00 am - 12:00 pm, pop into the CIRES communications office at the DSRC (3B508) to record a happy birthday message for CIRES and/or NOAA, and eat a cupcake! The messages will be used to create a video that will be shared on social media to celebrate CIRES' birthday (September 29) and NOAA's birthday (October 3).

If you aren't able to make the scheduled time and would like to record a message, please email ciresnews@colorado.edu to coordinate a different option.

ESOC coffee hour occurs weekly from 9-10am Wednesdays in the ESOC Reading Room (Ekeley W230). Please email Claire Waugh (waughc@colorado.edu) for information.

ESOC researchers, post-docs and graduate students gather for conversation and to discuss research. Occasional guest speakers are invited to give short presentations on topics of interest.