RACC High School Team presents poster at AGU

On December 17th, 2015, a RACC high school team from Bellows Free Academy-Fairfax presented their research poster at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Earth Sciences teacher, Tom Lane, BFA-Fairfax High School Juniors, Rebekah Larose and Sophie Lee, along with CWDD Director, Lindsay Wieland, traveled to San Francisco to present their Streams Project research. The teams in the High School Streams Project look at total phosphate, total nitrogen, and TSS in streams feeding into the Missisquoi and Winooski Rivers.

The BFA-Fairfax team was particularly interested in phosphate levels and microbial activity in soils at their stream sites. The BFA-Fairfax team analyzed data that their school has collected over the past four years as a part of the VT EPSCoR CWDD High School Program and were selected to present their poster during the "Bright STaRS: Bright Students Training as Research Scientists" poster session.
Title: "A Relationship Between Microbial Activity in Soils and Phosphate Levels in Tributaries to Lake Champlain"

An exciting surprise was listening to Vice President Al Gore, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Climate Reality Project, during a panel discussion called "The Earth from a Million Miles: Advancing Earth Observations from L1". The Vice President spoke about the impact one photograph, the "Blue Marble" image of Earth, had on the next generation of scientists and explorers in advancing space and climate research.