houck2040/artisci huggingface dataset:
texas sea grant welcomes two undergraduate students alexis guidroz and shadrach villafranca as summer interns through the new texas sea grant community engaged internship program (txsg-cei) the community engaged internship is an opportunity for undergraduate students from underserved and/or underrepresented or indigenous communities to gain experience and mentorship in an area of interest specific to each student this internship is part of a national sea grant-wide effort to broaden participation in marine and coastal professions to the next generation of scientists and decision-makers guidroz an undergraduate student studying environmental biology at the university of houston-clear lake will work in galveston under the mentorship of texas sea grants distinguished extension agent julie massey to learn more about environmental research in the area my plans right now are to just get involved in the community and learn new skills especially gain field experience guidroz said im excited for all the diversity [in opportunities] because i dont know exactly what i want to work with villafranca an undergraduate student majoring in marine biology at the university of texas rio grande valley (utrgv) will work with texas sea grant extension agent tony reisinger along with texas sea grant extension planning specialist kate de gennaro to gain valuable field experience in restoration and conservation efforts throughout the rio grande valley especially with fisheries and aquaculture since im going into the field of marine biology [this internship] lets me work with professionals to get to know them and build connections villafranca said im excited to get out there and start communicating and interacting with all these different people both guidroz and villafranca will gain experience and mentorship from texas sea grant professionals in their chosen fields over the summer and participate in community engagement activities they will also complete a professional development series that focuses on networking and building relationships with local community members the internship also requires completion of a project that extends the knowledge of community stakeholders to address coastal issues of environmental economic and social importance both interns will plan to present on their respective projects at the end of their internship term in august -30- media contact: sara carney communications manager texas sea grant scarney@tamuedu 979-458-8442 by corley-ann parker 20
dr chris maupin audrey housson 16 and lorraine mcchesney 16 half a mile underground in a williamson county cave (photo by chris maupin)audrey housson '16 and lorraine mcchesney 16 near golden gate bridge in san francisco california (photo courtesy of chris maupin)
large thunderstorms in the southern great plains (sgp) of the us are some of the strongest on earth in recent years these storms have increased in frequency and intensity and new research shows that these shifts are linked to climate variability co-authored by dr christopher maupin dr courtney schumacher and dr brendan roark all scientists in texas a&m universitys college of geosciences along with other researchers the research was recently published in nature geoscience in the study researchers analyzed oxygen isotopes from 30 000–50 000 year old stalactites from texas caves to understand trends in past thunderstorms and their durations using radar-based calibration for the regions rainfall isotopes they discovered that when storm regimes shift from weakly to strongly organized on millennial timescales they coincide with well-known global abrupt climate shifts during the last glacial period which occurred between about 120 000 and 11 500 years ago through modern-day synoptic analysis researchers learned that thunderstorms in the sgp are strongly related to changes in wind and moisture patterns occurring at a much larger scale understanding these changes and various correlations will not only help reconstruct past thunderstorm occurrences but also help predict future mid-latitude thunderstorm patterns "this method of climate research is under-used and ripe for amplification " the researchers said proxy records are available in the southern great plains within caves maupin said there are probably thousands of caves in southern great plains and in southern texas why hasnt more research occurred in those areas cave deposits are so promising as proxies "scientists understand modern-day rainfall patterns and that really big storms can deplete isotopes " schumacher said however we dont know what will happen in the future and this work will help predict trends of storms in the future if we can run a climate model for the past which is consistent with cave records and run that same model moving forward we can trust its findings more if it matched the cave records versus if they didnt she said out of two models if one really matches the cave isotopes then you can trust that one in understanding storm distribution in the future
southern great plains supercell thunderstorm (photo by chris maupin)southern great plains cg strike (photo by chris maupin)
caves hold little-known climate records maupin is a paleoclimatologist and described the limitations that exist in capturing the true distribution of weather events across time there are really important questions about what has happened in the past regarding big weather events we get through mesoscale convective systems (large storms) vs non-mesoscale (smaller storms) stuff maupin said we get so much precipitation from really big storms and model grids cant capture big weather events because the grids themselves are so big paleoclimatology helps with organizing past events to develop a proxy record of how they respond to mean climate what controls isotopes in rainfall texas doesnt have changing moisture sources altitude effects etc so its tough to identify what is being reconstructed maupin said every day it rained we took water samples measured the samples isotopic ratios and then looked at radar data to understand how to pick out what is connected to a mesoscale convective system or regular rainfall event maupin collaborated with national taiwan university to do uranium thorium dating and discovered that the stalactites and stalagmites were in fact from around the ice age the team worked with environmental consultants swca and cambrian environmental that had already been working in central texas karst voids which are prevalent in the austin and williamson county region some caves have stalactites and stalagmites growing in them he said sometimes new caves are breached by construction equipment stalactites and stalagmites are broken off we wanted to use those that were already broken and from a conservation mindset approach analyze the samples that were passed on to me research experience for undergraduate aggies celia lorraine mcchesney 16 and audrey housson 16 were two undergraduate researchers involved in this publication and both learned a great deal through the field work collaboration and high-impact learning experience the samples from the caves were used as a tool for high-impact learning in understanding texas paleoclimate maupin said one of the undergraduates started micro-milling the stalactites i was very fortunate to have access to the college of geosciences resources and to work with these talented undergrads on ground-breaking research being the lab manager for the stable isotopes geosciences facility maupin enjoys working on research projects that students can get involved in whenever he has time this publication allowed undergrads to engage in high impact research and get familiar with many different instruments
audrey housson 16 and lorraine mcchesney 16 collecting dripwaters and deploying temperature loggers in a williamson county cave (photo by chris maupin)audrey housson 16 and lorraine mcchesney 16 collecting dripwaters and deploying temperature loggers in a williamson county cave (photo by chris maupin)
what happens if we have a whole bunch of mesoscale convective systems that rain for 2-3 days in a row lorraine worked on understanding more extreme distributions while audrey built the record or rainfall events maupin said as long as you have a supportive environment anyone is capable of doing good research and coming up with good ideas both undergraduate researchers presented their research at the american geophysical union (agu) annual conference in 2016 my experience working on my senior thesis at the sigf lab was invaluable mcchesney said this research has allowed me to travel and go out into the field mcchesney expressed the gratification researchers experience when conducting research outdoors emerging from the ground covered in mud after exploring a cave that few people have ever visited was definitely my favorite part of this process mcchesney said most importantly the technical knowledge and work ethic that are involved in working on a project like this have stuck with me and are skills i carried into my professional life she added having been one of the first to conduct their kind of research undergraduate researcher housson expressed her gratitude in having the opportunity to study various correlations to the paleoclimate record as an undergraduate research student at texas a&m i was proud to be part of one of the first teams to correlate climate change and weather linkages in a paleoclimate record housson said this whole experience provided great exposure to the academic world and made me more confident as a scientist now as a geologist and civil engineer i am working on heavy civil infrastructure projects like tunnels and dams related to water resources i love how my career ties back into my undergraduate research where knowing the correlation between climate change and weather helps plan for water resources in the future she added interdisciplinary collaboration schumachers expertise was needed to make connections with various rainfall events that occurred over time she had experience working with radar data and rain measurements on a global scale large storms that cover hundreds of miles provide around 50-80% of rain in texas schumacher said in the modern day these storms have different isotope signatures chris has modern day measurements really unique information which help reconstruct what has happened in the past schumacher said he also has 30 000 – 50 000-year-old samples of stalactites and stalagmites
lorraine mcchesney 16 holds a freshly collected dripwater sample retrieved for oxygen and hydrogen isotope ratio measurements these measurements help link thunderstorm precipitation with speleothem-forming groundwater (photo by chris maupin)
schumacher was interested to join this paleo-radar initiative because it allowed researchers to look at modern day records (in terms of storms and isotopes in texas) and link them back to these ancient cave deposit observations making this link and showing very significant changes to storms over thousands of years is very powerful schumacher said my role in this project was to help understand storm processes and how they may relate back to the isotope measurements in addition to large scale wind and moisture pattern dynamics in atmospheric circulations i try to understand how storms may be impacted by changing weather patterns and can tell you what kind of weather patterns these storms will form in and when they might not understanding basic principles of science make you realize the importance of taking daily rain measurements to understand what causes big storms maupin said its raining [these] are the physical processes involved thats what inspired taking daily measurements of rain after samples of rain are taken it is important to understand the isotope distribution within them to make connections between what kind of weather event they are from people think you deplete heavier isotopes from different air when in fact it is big storms schumacher said this finding is a huge paradigm shift which made publishing these findings difficult these research discoveries are far from the standard model of studying paleoclimate and caves maupin added maupins research is pushing back on outdated principles in the paleo-world because you have to study how storms get larger and what influences them he said these thunderstorms are so big that even if most of the rain occurs in oklahoma rain in texas will still carry isotopic signature of these huge storms maupin stated youre fingerprinting these systems despite where they occur and they dont have to be super localized to be recognized big storms cause depleted isotopic signatures you cant explain the variability in stalactites with temperature changes alone you can have the same amount of rain and if you have a lot of little storms producing the same amount of rain as one big storm you will get a very different isotopic signatures he said that really matters maupin clarified that this projects analysis takes a simple ingredients-based approach of the knowledge researchers currently have to understand the consistency in how the large-scale winds change to encourage or discourage these really big storms other people are very interested in this schumacher said it has been a very interdisciplinary project where we have had to bring in observational expertise from the weather and chemistry side looking at model data etc by mariam moeen '19 texas a&m college of geosciences
in the last 100 years atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen significantly researchers say
in a new study scientists have estimated carbon dioxide levels from the past 66 million years using two methods analyzing tiny organisms found in sediment cores from the deep seafloor and found a consistent picture of the evolution of the ocean-atmosphere carbon dioxide levels co-authored by dr yige zhang assistant professor in the department of oceanography at texas a&m university and oceanography graduate student xiaoqing liu the research was conducted by an international team and recently published in in the annual review of earth and planetary sciences this new environmental reconstruction research shows that twenty-first-century carbon emissions have the potential to return atmospheric carbon dioxide (co2) to levels not seen since the much warmer climates of earths distant past the study found co2 levels of over 1500 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere associated with extreme global warmth 50 million years ago a climate so warm that no ice existed on the poles the researchers said for instance at co2 levels of around 1500 ppm last seen about 50 million years ago it was so warm that we find fossilized alligators in the arctic said dr james rae lead author of the paper and reader in the school of earth and environmental sciences at the university of st andrews
at co2 levels of around 1500 ppm last seen about 50 million years ago it was so warm that we find fossilized alligators in the arctic researchers say (image courtesy of james rae)
for the last 1 million years co2 levels slowly oscillated between 180 ppm and 300 ppm as earths climate transitioned in and out of the ice ages with the dawn of agriculture and human settlement only establishing when co2 and climate stabilized at the end of the last ice age around 10 000 years ago rae said in the last 100 years fossil fuel burning has driven co2 from 280 up to 414 ppm he said understanding ancient atmosphere using tiny ocean organisms societally we all care about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in paleoclimatology we have these methods to look at co2 variations in earths history zhang explained and in particular these two-ocean marine-based methods are the two most common and arguably the most accurate we used those two state-of-the-art methods analyzed how they compare with each other and looked at what history they inform us about for the last 66 million years the researchers used two proxy methods to reconstruct carbon dioxide levels during the last 66 million years also known as the cenozoic era: one method using carbon isotopes in alkenones and another method using boron isotopes in planktic foraminifera – single-celled organisms with calcite shells common in marine cores zhang collaborated with researchers from the university of st andrews and the university of south hampton both in the uk and the swiss federal institute of technology in zürich these data allow us to see how co2 has changed through earths history and the impact this has had on climate rae said over the last 66 million years we find that co2 and global climate go hand in hand with higher co2 levels associated with dramatically different climates zhang helped oversee the alkenones method team along with dr heather stoll professor at eth zürich and liu assisted in the research rae worked on the boron isotope methods along with dr gavin foster of the university of southampton and dr ross whiteford of the university of st andrews the alkenone method begins with biomarkers that were produced by algae millions of years ago and these algae like algae today were photosynthetic – just like plants or trees on land zhang said when these algae photosynthesize they fractionate carbon isotopes that process is determined by a number of factors and one of them is the amount of co2 available to them in seawater
chemical fingerprints of past co2 levels are preserved in microscopic fossil shells such as this foraminifera (image courtesy of the foraminifera project)yige zhang assistant professor of oceanography
these biomarkers leave a timeline of carbon levels he explained samples were taken from cores of mud from the deep sea floor where microscopic fossils and ancient molecules accumulate preserving the history of co2 and climate by firing these ancient atoms through super sensitive instruments scientists can detect the chemical fingerprints of past changes in co2 the shells and molecules we measure capture the chemistry of seawater at the time they grow said rae over the last 20 years scientists have figured out how to use these chemical fingerprints to reconstruct how much co2 was in seawater and the atmosphere above it these methods have been the focus of the researchers various efforts for years and together they aim for this paper to contribute to wider efforts to combine a broader range of paleo-co2 proxies recent refinements to these methods now allow more accurate and precise reconstructions of the ancient atmosphere this refined method produces co2 estimates that are in line with the ice core-derived co2 records over the last one million years zhang said this gives us more confidence in extending the reconstructions to the entire cenozoic era the last time co2 was as high as it is today was 3 million years ago and it drove enough warming to melt all the ice from greenland and west antarctica and raise sea level by around 60 feet rae said it takes time for global warming to catch up with co2 levels but the geological record shows us where were headed if we dont use cleaner ways to get our energy by leslie lee texas a&m college of geosciences
oceanography undergraduate students on a cruise field trip for oceanographic field and laboratory methods course image credit: dr chrissy wiederwohl
after a year of quarantine social distancing and occupancy limitations undergraduate students from texas a&ms department of oceanography were able to get back into the field for much needed hands-on learning during two cruises this spring semester as part of the oceanographic field and laboratory methods course the cruises were led by dr chrissy wiederwohl over the last year this course had to be taught without these field trips because of covid-19 protocols lab and field methods like collecting various samples from a research vessel had to be demonstrated or explained in the classroom and online its hard to teach field methods without the field wiederwohl said so the second texas a&m said they were opening up field trips again for the spring semester i jumped at the opportunity even with field trips like this open again safety still took precedence covid-19 testing was required for all students and faculty on the cruises as well as wearing kn95 masks and social distancing throughout the trips these cruises were also still subject to a 50 percent occupancy limitation for some students these field trips were their first opportunity to experience oceanographic cruises for others like seniors dylan halbeisen and andrew jansen the april 9 cruise could be their last cruise before graduating and moving on to the next step in their careers my favorite part was watching everybody work together halbeisen said everybodys on the job taking it seriously there for the science and for one another; its a pretty powerful moment
students getting hands-on experience during galveston bay cruise image credit: dr chrissy wiederwohlstudents collecting samples on galveston bay image credit: dr chrissy wiederwohl
the field and lab methods course included two research cruises in galveston bay during the semester on march 2 and april 9 2021 to give students the hands-on experience that can be lacking in other programs of study on the first cruise early in the semester each student learned how to use all the different equipment and to properly collect a variety of oceanographic samples on the ship at least once when the second cruise came around later in the semester the training wheels came off and the students were expected to run the show and work as a team to accomplish all cruise goals it was great to actually apply some of the stuff weve learned in class said jansen the students can also take pride in the fact that their data collections were not only for class purposes but also contributed to ongoing oceanographic research by sampling at various sites along the houston ship channel the data collected by the students is often used to help fill in gaps of other studies taking place in galveston bay they like seeing the behind-the-scenes… theyve had a lot of classes where they work with data sets but dont know where they came from wiederwohl said it gives them their first real taste of what being a scientist is from raw data collection in the field to the final data product at the end of the course students prepared a complete cruise report where they presented all the data collected over the two cruises just as any other oceanographer would what i enjoy the most is the students' excitement about these research cruises and how much they grow as scientists throughout the semester wiederwohl said by justin agan ‘18
sediment sampling from the r/v trident using a van veen sediment grab sampler image credit: texas a&m university at galveston (left) and chris mouchyn college of geosciences texas a&m university (right)
approximately 25 percent of the lead in galveston bay is from human sources a new study says this study used state-of-the-art geochemical modeling for environmental analysis scientists from the university of houston new mexico state university texas a&m university and texas a&m university at galveston used a novel method of lead isotope measurement to fingerprint lead sources to galveston bay despite the high proportion of lead from human influence the study finds overall lead concentrations to be below benthic (bottom-dwelling) ecology toxicity thresholds set by the national oceanic and atmospheric administration (noaa) galveston bay is such a rich system to study because its a natural estuary that also has strong anthropogenic influences because of industrialization along its shorelines dr jessica fitzsimmons co-author and associate professor in texas a&ms department of oceanography says so it is a perfect place to study contaminant cycling within natural systems while there are no known lead ore deposits in galveston bay there are other sources of naturally weathered lead that enter the system through river water despite this the scientists found that bay sediment leaches (weak chemical dissolutions which access the surface-most portions of the sediments) were approximately 84% anthropogenic while the overall bulk sediments were mostly derived from natural lead sources this research emphasizes that sediment leaches access the same surface-most pools of lead that biota might access within galveston bay sediments and these lead pools are dominantly human-supplied