News

Fifteen 8th-grade students from Green Mountain Valley School in Waitsfield, Vermont met virtually with CWDD staff member Janel Roberge on February 10, 2022 to learn about delineating watersheds and the tools used to do so. The students got first-hand experience as to how difficult it can be to fully understand what goes on in a watershed. With this understanding, they will use their findings and some data from the Vermont EPSCoR Streams Database to create a watershed management plan with the goal of supporting land conservation, biodiversity, and ecosystem services.

Vermont EPSCoR Scientist Brian Beckage is part of a team that published a study in the journal Nature suggesting that as the planet gets hotter, our climate policies will increase in ambition and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will accelerate. "We can't forget the human capacity to react and adapt," he says. "We're part of the climate system and our models should take that into account."

Patrick Clemins, PhD, Vermont EPSCoR Manager of Cyberinfrastructure and Partnerships, has joined the steering committee for the Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) People Network Emerging Centers Track. As a steering committee member, he will work with peers around the country to plan discussions for the monthly Emerging Centers Track calls and develop other professional activities for the community.

BREE researcher and Vermont State Climatologist Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, PhD will be honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) in February 2022. The award comes after a unanimous decision by the AAG's Climate Specialty Group, which chose to honor Dr. Dupigny-Giroux for her many achievements in climate science. This body of work includes 25 years as Vermont's State Climatologist and over 40 peer-reviewed publications in the fields that include climate variability and change, severe weather hazards, drought, and remote sensing.

BREE postdoctoral associate Dustin, Kincaid, PhD received the 2020 Water Resources Research (WRR) Editors' Choice Award for his research article "Land Use and Season Influence Event-Scale Nitrate and Soluble Reactive Phosphorus Exports and Export Stoichiometry from Headwater Catchments." The article, which used research supported by BREE funding, includes numerous collaborators from Vermont EPSCoR, including postdoctoral associate Erin Seybold, PhD, Ecological Systems Team Co-Leaders Carol Adair, PhD and Andrew Schroth, PhD, BREE researchers Breck Bowden, PhD and Julia Perdrial, PhD, and Matthew Vaughan, PhD, a former RACC graduate research assistant who now serves as the Chief Scientist at the Lake Champlain Basin Program.

Patrick Clemins, PhD, Manager of Cyberinfrastructure and Partnerships, presented remotely about the efforts by Vermont EPSCoR, the Internet of Things (IoT) Conduit, the Vermont Unified Community Anchor Network (UCAN) to establish an IoT network for community use. Held on December 16, 2021, the online presentation took place virtually at The Quilt Wireless Network Discussion Group, a monthly meeting dedicated to the exploration of long-range wireless networking in support of regional research and education networks.

A new study led by a team of researchers based at the University of Vermont has applied a unique modeling method to more precisely assess the influences of temperature and precipitation – and the relationship between them – on cyanobacteria growth. They focused on Missisquoi Bay, a shallow swath of northeastern Lake Champlain where cyanobacteria is prevalent.

Property damages from flooding in Vermont are calculated to exceed $5.2 billion over the next 100 years, new University of Vermont research finds. The most flood damages are projected along the Winooski River floodplains, which houses many of the state’s most populous towns, including Burlington, Essex, Colchester, Williston and Montpelier.

On Friday, November 19, 2021, VT EPSCoR CWDD's Operations Manager Janel Roberge remotely visited 46 seventh-grade science students at Harwood Union Middle School to confirm students' macroinvertebrate identifications. Students had recently sampled a stream near their school as part of an annual water quality unit that the CWDD has been a part of since 2015. The students were thrilled that they had accurately identified several different types of benthic macroinvertebrates, including pollution-intolerant species!

On October 8, 2021, Northfield Middle High School science teacher Cynthia Fortin lead roughly forty 7th grade students to nearby Union Brook to evaluate the health of the water. Water Quality Assessment materials were provided by the Vermont EPSCoR Center for Workforce Development and Diversity.

Northern Vermont University’s Atmospheric Sciences Faculty and Alums Publish Peer-Reviewed Research that Addresses the Importance of Accurate Great Lakes Temperatures in Climate Projection Models.

Would you like coaching on communicating the value of your research or science generally? A research team is offering free science communication training to the University of Vermont as part of a study. Registration will remain open until all slots are filled, space is limited!

Researchers at the University of Vermont, the University of Maine and Vermont Technical College have received a $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop and test new technologies that could make monitoring the safety and performance of infrastructure less expensive, more accurate and more widespread, resulting in more dependable, durable structures in the future.

BREE graduate research assistant Brittany Lancellotti presented her PhD dissertation defense, "Investigating spatial and temporal variability of environmental and biological controls on riparian soil denitrification," on September 8, 2021. The defense was presented remotely via Zoom to an audience of over one dozen, including Brittany's committee of Carol Adair, PhD, Andrew Schroth, PhD, Julia Perdrial, PhD, and Eric Roy, PhD.

On September 15th, 2021 Dr. Clive Lipchin presented "Solutions for off grid food-energy-water in a transboundary context" to an in person / remote audience at VT EPSCoR's 23 Mansfield Interdisciplinary Research Space conference room. Dr. Lipchin was invited by Dr. Asim Zia, Science Co-Leader for the BREE Integrated Assessment Model (IAM). Dr. Lipchin serves as director of the Arava Institute’s Center for Transboundary Water Management. He oversees research projects, workshops and conferences that focus on transboundary water and environmental problems facing Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. His specialty is in water resources management and policy. He consults for a number of national and international water agencies such as the World Bank, EU, UNDP and USAID and has been involved most recently with the European Union's Water Initiative project for the Mediterranean region.

Vermont EPSCoR celebrated water quality research in the Lake Champlain Basin through the Research on Adaptation to Climate Change (RACC) and Basin Resilience to Extreme Events (BREE) with an exciting All Hands Meeting on August 9, 2021 at the University of Vermont (UVM) Davis Center. Over 70 participants attended observing pandemic guidelines, including stakeholders, alumni, graduate students, post-doctoral associates, members of the BREE External Advisory Committee, and members of Vermont EPSCoR’s Policy and Technical Advisory Committee.

The 2021-2022 VT EPSCoR CWDD Undergraduate Intern Symposium was held virtually this year due to Covid-19. Webpages created by our interns showcased their work performed over the summer. Posters, video presentations, work descriptions and photos which are usually shared in person during the Undergraduate Intern Symposium are now available online. Please join us in congratulating our summer interns for all of their accomplishments.

Seven STEM Scholarships were awarded to meritorious Native American, BIPOC and First Generation Vermonters pursuing a Science, Technology, Engineer or Math (STEM) Major at a Vermont Higher Education Institution. The scholarships were awarded during the Vermont EPSCoR All Hands Meeting held at the University of Vermont Davis Center on August 9, 2021.

The Vermont EPSCoR CWDD traveled to the ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont on July 22, 2021 to assist a former High School Program participant in an Ecosystems Explorer's Camp. CWDD Operations Manager Janel Roberge and St. Michael's College Professor of Biology Declan McCabe, PhD led approximately 20 third through fifth graders through plankton and lake bottom sampling. Students then used CWDD-provided microscopes to check out their water and "muck" samples to see if they could find anything surprising. The sessions left students with a better knowledge of what they can do if the encounter a harmful invasive species.

CWDD Operations Manager Janel Roberge and St. Michael's College Professor of Biology Declan McCabe, PhD traveled to City Park in South Burlington, VT on July 24, 2021 to lead a terrestrial macroinvertebrate hike with community scientists. A total of 18 participants of varying ages used equipment provided by the CWDD to catch some six- and eight-legged friends throughout the part. After the activity, participants got to use a microscope to examine their finds. The CWDD staff on hand helped participants identify their catches before releasing them. Dr. McCabe ended the activity with a discussion about invasive species and provided some tips about what the community scientists could do to help stop their spread.