News

Dr. Alan Betts gave two talks in Richford Vermont this month and was the Keynote speaker at the annual colloquium of the Green Churches of Canada in Quebec City.

Vermont EPSCoR has partnered with LaunchVT to provide Vermont businesses additional funding opportunities.

Transcend Engineering deployed second generation prototypes of its PRISMS soil moisture sensing technology in two boreholes at the U.S.Department of Energy (DOE) environmental field research station in Rifle, CO, on the site of a former uranium tailings operation. The new installations bring the total number of PRISMS sensors at the site to 11.

The CUAHSI Water Data Center (WDC) has developed a modern data publication and data discovery system for sharing time series data (like gage data or water quality sensor data) that works much the same way as a Google works. Users open a client (in much the same way as a web browser), searches a catalog (maintained by the WDC) for data, and downloads the data in a standardized format that the client understands (just like browser interprets HTML to layout text and pictures). The WDC has implemented all parts of the system in the Cloud environment to simplify access and use of this software. With this basic foundation established, the challenge now is that to make these services useful for academic research and education. Demonstrations of how these data services will be used in the National Flood Interoperability Experiment (to be held at the National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, AL this summer) will be presented, as will approaches for using these data services to advance research collaboration among teams of scientists and among universities. Feedback from the audience about additional tools and services will be solicited.

Field Research in Mongolia Informs Senior's Thesis
UVM News
After graduating this spring, she'll join UVM professor Breck Bowden's lab in Alaska, looking at the influence of melting permafrost on nutrient cycling in Alaskan streams. Eventually, she hopes to go to graduate school, adding that, someday, she'd ...

Grad Student's $140K Award Goes to Spam Folder
UVM News
Brand's research, advised by engineering professors Mandar Dewoolkar and Donna Rizzo, aims to find a less expensive, safer and quicker retrofit for vulnerable bridges compared to current methods. UVM alumnus Jonathan Gonzalez, a doctoral student at ...

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On March 30, 2015, the VT EPSCoR Center for Workforce Development and Diversity (CWDD) hosted a Workshop on Mentoring Diverse Groups for members of the Research on Adaptation to Climate Change in the Lake Champlain Basin (RACC) group led by Drs. Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux and Jason Stockwell. Workshop attendees included faculty, postdocs, grad students, and staff who will interact with undergraduate and high school students throughout the year and during the summer research internships. Summer internships start during the first week of June.
During the workshop, mentors discussed how to effectively mentor diverse students.
Discussion topics included:
- Identifying and working through implicit bias
- Creating an inclusive environment in which to air concerns
- Best practices for mentoring

University of Vermont researchers testified to state lawmakers this week that climate change is real and caused by human activity.

The scholars testified to Vermont’s Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy in advance of a bill that, if passed, would make Vermont the first U.S. state to acknowledge humans as the primary cause of climate change.

WPTZ The Champlain Valley
Launch VT announces pitch competition finalists
WPTZ The Champlain Valley
DAVID: PATRICK CLEMINS FROM VERMONT EPSCOR, AN ORGANIZATION FUNDED IN PART BY THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION THAT AIMS TO HELP PROMOTE SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. THEY'VE JUST PARTNERED WITH LAUNCH V.T., ...

BurlingtonFreePress.com
LaunchVT announces finalists for cash, prizes
BurlingtonFreePress.com
The second place prize is the result of a partnership with Vermont EPSCoR, and is called the VT EPSCoR Innovate Cash Prize. EPSCoR stands for the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research and is designed in conjunction with Vermont's ...

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Another successful Symposium. Thanks to the over 200 participants who made it all possible.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell joined Senator Pat Leahy at the Leahy Center Environmental Summit Friday, March 20.

Both addressed the about 150 regional environmental leaders including Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux of the Vermont EPSCoR RACC team, Jewell as keynote, then spent time inside the science center.

A whole group meeting of consortium members from Delaware, Rhode Island and Vermont meet in person to conduct their second annual meeting on the University of Delaware campus on March 23, 2015. The meeting was held in Townsend Hall, location of the NEWRnet social dimensions class taught by Dr. Kent Messer, to graduate students in DE, RI and VT via video-conference. Over 38 NEWRnet members from all three states attended in person along with several members participating remotely by video-conference due to travel constraints. Also attending were External Advisory Committee (EAC) members, Drs. Sidney McNairy and Stephen Swallow. The day-long meeting provided an opportunity for small group breakout sessions on the sensors network, social dimensions, data management and external engagement combined with whole group discussion and integration of groups. An Executive Committee Meeting was also held to discuss recent AAAS recommendations and next steps which Dr. Dan Leathers, PD from DE, presented for discussion to the whole group. Finally, a very productive whole group discussion on next steps moving forward concluded the very useful meeting. Thanks to DE EPSCoR for hosting such a well organized day!

Trevor Gearhart, RACC Graduate Research Assistant, Patrick Clemins, VT EPSCoR Cyber Specialist, Lindsay Wieland, Director, VT EPSCoR Center for Workforce Development and Diversity (CWDD) at Saint Michael's College and Lillian Gamache, Project Coordinator, visited legislators at the Vermont Statehouse on Friday, March 20, 2015 to share recent news and provide information about VT EPSCoR's impact across the state. Many legislators stopped by to learn about the high school outreach program, the research and cyber-infrastructure improvements that VT EPSCoR has invested in partnership with numerous stakeholders and aligned with state priorities. Several legislators were aware of recent testimony provided by RACC members to policy and decision makers during a February House Committee meeting.

We present evidence of increasing persistence in daily precipitation in the northeastern United States that suggests that global circulation changes are affecting regional precipitation patterns. Meteorological data from 222 stations in 10 northeastern states are analyzed using Markov chain parameter estimates to demonstrate that a significant mode of precipitation variability is the persistence of precipitation events. We find that the largest region-wide trend in wet persistence (i.e., the probability of precipitation in 1 day and given precipitation in the preceding day) occurs in June (+0.9% probability per decade over all stations). We also find that the study region is experiencing an increase in the magnitude of high-intensity precipitation events. The largest increases in the 95th percentile of daily precipitation occurred in April with a trend of +0.7 mm/d/decade. We discuss the implications of the observed precipitation signals for watershed hydrology and flood risk.

Our analyses suggest that most of CMIP5 ensembles fail to capture both the trends and variability observed in historical precipitation when run in hindcast. This raises concerns of using such products in driving hydrologic models for the purpose of obtaining reliable runoff projections that can aid researchers in regional planning. A subset of five climate models among the CMIP5 ensembles have shown statistically significant trends in precipitation, but the magnitude of these trends is not adequately representative of those seen in observed annual precipitation. Adjusted precipitation forecasts project a streamflow regime described by an increase of about 30% in seven-day maximum flow, a four days increase in flooded days, a three orders of magnitude increase in base flow index, and a 60% increase in runoff predictability (Colwell index).

Understanding Daily Climate at Northern Latitudes
Dr. Alan K. Betts
Atmospheric Research, Pittsford, VT 05763
akbetts@aol.com
http://alanbetts.com
Lyndon State
March 23, 2015

VTC, VEC to hold 4th Annual Water Quality Conference May 29
Vermont Biz
... CPSWQ, Stormwater Program Manager, Burlington Dept. of Public Works; Jamey Fidel, General Council & Forest and Wildlife Program Director, VT Natural Resources Council; Eric Clifford, President, Champlain Valley Farmer Coalition Inc. Breck Bowden, ...

Working with the Earth
Barre Montpelier Times Argus
This winter the eastern United States and Canada have had below-normal temperatures and above-normal snow cover. These go together: Snow reflects sunlight and can lock in cold temperatures. In the fall the warmer Great Lakes produced many lake-effect ...

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UVM Expert on Biofuel Energy Applies Research and Industry Advances ...
UVM News
She is working with UVM Continuing and Distance Education to add an online version of the course, potentially reaching even more people outside Vermont. She plans to maintain the same curriculum and offer “virtual” field trips, lectures from experts ...