The coastline, or grounding zone, where the massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet atop land meets the Ross Sea, is considered an important piece of the puzzle for scientists working to predict the effect of climate change on rising seawaters, which threaten coastal cities worldwide.
Yet researchers have never laid eyes on it.
Never probed its dark shores. Never documented what life exists there under the ice. Never taken measurements to assess the coastline stability.
The problem: This grounding zone is buried by ice thicker than the Empire State Building is tall. Beyond its shoreline, the ice extends out over the sea in a floating slab known as the Ross Ice Shelf, which covers a region nearly the size of Spain.
Now, led by Northern Illinois University geology professor Ross Powell, a team of American scientists is for the first time preparing to directly explore this murky region of the planet.
Exploring the unknown
At a site in the Antarctic wilderness on the inner edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, the team will use a hot water drill to bore a 1-foot diameter hole through the ice in January. The scientists will lower cameras and a suite of slimly designed high-tech instruments through about a half mile of ice into a cavity of shallow seawater – allowing them to peer into an aquatic world never before seen and analyze its iced-over coastline.
For Powell and others on the project – including three students from NIU and geologist Reed Scherer, who is among the lead scientists – the expedition is akin to traveling to another planet.
“It’s like exploring in outer space,” Powell says. “Unless you go there, you can’t absolutely confirm what is going on.
“While remote sensing has given us a sense of the grounding-zone environment, the images, data and samples we retrieve will provide us with a wealth of new information,” he adds.
The new data will supply scientific modelers with important information needed to predict the potential speed of ice sheet demise and the impact of climate change on the world’s oceans and coastal communities.
How stable is the ice sheet?
More specifically, the work will help scientists assess the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, most of which sits below sea level. (Ice sheets are on land; ice shelves over water.) It is the last ice sheet on Earth resting in a deep marine basin and is the most likely player in any future, rapid sea-level rise. If the grounding zone is retreating or primed to retreat, rapid changes in ice behavior could follow over the next century.
“Scientists worldwide are working to determine the risk of West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse, but we don’t have enough information,” Scherer says. “This work will provide missing pieces to the puzzle and give us an idea of how quickly things are happening.
“Coastlines are dynamic places – and the Antarctic is no exception,” he adds. “As land transitions to sea, low-lying muddy flats along the coastline are thought to ‘grease the skids’ of the ice sheet as it feeds into ocean.”
Ross Powell and Reed Scherer in the Antarctic in early 2013.
NSF-supported project
The National Science Foundation is supporting the drilling effort, part of a multi-year project known as WISSARD, for Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling.
The WISSARD team in 2013 successfully explored subglacial Lake Whillans, a body of water trapped beneath the ice sheet, and reported in Nature this past August on its find of abundant and viable microbial life.
Previous research had determined Lake Whillans fills with water and drains every five years or so into a stream or streams beneath the ice sheet and running to the ocean. The grounding zone targeted for investigation is about 70 miles northwest and downstream of the lake, and scientists expect to find a discharge of freshwater and sediment from the lake and areas upstream.
“Under conditions of global warming, the grounding line becomes more important in terms of ice sheet stability and migration,” Powell says. “If the region beneath the ice and on land is extensively wet and muddy, it could allow the ice to flow more quickly into the ocean and potentially make the ice more unstable to raise world sea level more rapidly than at present. There are also tides in this area, as with any coastline, and the ice moves up and down. We don’t know what effect this movement has on the discharge of water and sediment from land into sea.
“Our team also wants to learn what life forms exist in this area of the sea beneath the ice,” Powell says. “It will be interesting to find out if the microbial life is similar or different to what was found in the lake, and we’re unsure if we’ll see larger life forms, such as fish or crabs. It seems unlikely, but who knows.”
Scientists and students from about a dozen universities are involved in the research effort – with NIU, Montana State University and the University of California Santa Cruz serving as lead institutions. Powell is the project’s chief scientist.
Reed Scherer shot this photo of his computer screen showing the live video feed down the borehole in January 2013.
Project that nearly wasn’t
Despite the importance of the grounding-zone examination, the latest effort almost didn’t happen.
Originally, the downstream drilling was to have taken place early this year. Preparations were well under way when they were scuttled by the partial U.S. government shutdown. It was eventually resolved, but because Antarctic operations are logistically complex, there wasn’t enough time and resources left to prepare for field deployment.
“We at NSF are very excited that the WISSARD project will be able to complete its work this year,” says Lisa Clough, an NSF program officer for Antarctic science.
“The work done by the WISSARD team within subglacial Lake Whillans has confirmed the long-hypothesized existence of dynamic life beneath the ice sheet, and completing the work at the Whillans grounding zone is essential to move forward the scientific understanding of the integrated subglacial hydrological system,” Clough adds. “WISSARD scientists have shown there is not just land and water beneath the ice, but most likely an entire coastal wetlands system, and the team’s direct access of the grounding zone region will be critical in our understanding of the flow of water, ice, particles and life across this transition zone.”
The ‘deep field’
The project requires extensive logistical support.
NIU geology department students and faculty participating in the WISSARD project include (left to right) Ph.D. candidate Tim Hodson, chief scientist Ross Powell, scientist Reed Scherer and graduate students Jason Coenen and Rebecca Puttkammer.
Two years ago, an operations team, using giant Caterpillar and Challenger tractors, pulled sleds about 600 miles across the Ross Ice Shelf, before setting up camp at the Lake Whillans drill site.
When scientific work was completed, some of the larger equipment was packed up and left at the site for the coming project. That included the $3 million hot-water drill and large shipping containers that serve as equipment and command centers.
Now buried by snow from two Antarctic winters, that equipment will be dug out and transported to the grounding zone. Fuel, supplies and other equipment will again be transported across the ice on sleds, while weather-sensitive instruments will be flown in, including several types of water sensors and samplers, three types of sediment corers, a geothermal probe and a small remotely operated vehicle equipped with cameras for underwater exploration.
Scientists and students, who will arrive at the drill site via airplane, will have several days to a week to complete their fieldwork. Since January falls during the Antarctic summer, the sun will never set – and the work will never stop.
“Once the borehole is made, it’s a 24-hour science operation,” Scherer says. “Last time, we had four days of science, which meant four days of very little sleep.”
Still, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime for NIU students Tim Hodson, who’s working on his Ph.D. and making his second trip to Antarctica, and geology graduate students Jason Coenen and Rebecca Puttkammer, making their first trip.
“I cannot get over the uniqueness and the awesomeness of this opportunity,” said the 25-year-old Puttkammer, a first-year graduate student who came to NIU from Northwestern University to study with Powell and Scherer. “This is my research dream, and it’s hard to believe I’m achieving it during my master’s program.
“I think I’ll miss the sunset and sunrise,” she adds. “But it will be worth it.”
Date posted: October 29, 2014 | Author: Thomas Parisi | Comments Off on Exploring the unseen West Antarctic coastline
This is the fifth time CSEAS has received such funding since its designation as a National Resource Center (NRC) for Southeast Asian Studies in 1997.
“We are the only undergraduate National Resource Center for Southeast Asian Studies. The other centers nationwide cater exclusively to graduate students” said CSEAS Director Judy Ledgerwood. “Workshops, conferences, curriculum development and outreach all depend on this funding.”
Federal grant monies also support the center’s Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships. These fellowships, which provide monthly stipends and tuition-fee waivers, are awarded competitively to NIU graduate and undergraduate students studying Southeast Asian languages. This year, the center is awarding nine FLAS fellowships for graduate students and four fellowships for undergraduate students.
NIU offers on-campus instruction in five Southeast Asian languages – Burmese, Indonesian, Khmer, Tagalog and Thai – and off-campus instruction in Vietnamese through a distance-learning exchange with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. NIU is one of three universities in the nation to offer Burmese, Ledgerwood said.
“Language instruction is one of our top priorities,” she said. “The program is designed to ensure that more people learn to speak these less commonly taught languages.”
Judy Ledgerwood
With the new Title VI funding, the center plans to expand its language instruction in partnering with four Illinois community colleges – Waubonsee Community College, Elgin Community College, Harper College and Triton College.
“We have funding to provide transportation for faculty and students to our campus, training programs for community college faculty and distance-language courses so students can come to NIU with their language requirement satisfied,” Ledgerwood said.
The center hosts an online language training website, SEAsite, which supplements classroom instruction with exercises in vocabulary, grammar and listening comprehension.
“Those tools have been in existence since 1997,” Ledgerwood said. “The new grant money will allow us to take the SEAsite and make it accessible via mobile devices. Migrating into new technology is important.”
The center’s language offerings are what attracted Cecelie Keys, a senior English major.
“I have always been interested in learning languages,” said Keys, who has studied Chinese and Japanese and is currently taking Thai. “I would like to use my knowledge of different languages to do cross-cultural research in Southeast Asian studies.”
Keys, a Joliet native pursuing minors in Japanese and Southeast Asian Studies, is also a FLAS fellow. The fellowship does more than just fund her education.
“The fellowship allows me to continue to focus on strengthening my Thai language studies,” she said.
The center’s spring program for high school students from the region – the Southeast Asia Youth Leadership Program (SEAYLP) – is awaiting final approval of a $490,000 grant from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Ledgerwood said.
Preparations, however, are already under way for the center to host 60 Southeast Asian high school students for three weeks.
This will be the eighth time NIU has hosted the program. It engages students in courses and workshops on leadership, entrepreneurship, team-building, cultural diversity, environmental sustainability, economic growth and supporting vulnerable groups. The program concludes with a three-day study tour of the nation’s capital.
Last May, NIU established a fellowship program for SEAYLP alumni, providing a tuition waiver for former SEAYLP students to attend NIU. Two SEAYLP alumni began studies at NIU in August.
The combination of academic instruction, research and outreach has earned the center a national and international reputation for its faculty scholarship, research resources and language and area studies strength. “The Center for Southeast Asian Studies is one of the top programs in the United States,” said Ledgerwood, an anthropologist and Cambodia specialist.
An interdisciplinary center founded in 1963, CSEAS is affiliated with more than 13 departments on campus and includes 27 faculty associates on its center council. It offers an undergraduate minor and a graduate certificate in Southeast Asian studies.
NIU has the fifth largest Southeast Asian library collection in the United States, with 121,721 cataloged volumes of which 54 percent are in the vernacular languages of Southeast Asia. The Center for Burma Studies has its own art collection, and the university’s Anthropology Museum has large collections of cultural items from Southeast Asia.
Date posted: October 28, 2014 | Author: Thomas Parisi | Comments Off on Center for Southeast Asian Studies earns $2 million in federal grants
“While many children in grandparent-headed households may do fine, children living with grandparents are at risk for having more psychological problems than those living with traditional two-parent families,” Pittman says. “This is probably because of the negative circumstances that led to the household formation, for example poverty, adolescent parents or child maltreatment.”
Pittman goes on to suggest how schools and counselors can assist these families.
NIU psychology professors are regular Psychology Today contributors. They’ve been blogging monthly on the site for more than a year.
English instructor and noted author Molly McNett offers constructive criticism to NIU student Savanna Robles.
NIU students taking fiction and First Year Composition classes taught by English instructor Molly McNett can be assured of this: They’re learning from one of the nation’s best writers.
McNett has proven time and time again that she’s the real deal. Now the award-winning short-fiction author has yet another national recognition to add to her collection.
“Publication in these annual collections is reserved for the very best short story authors,” English Chair Amy Levin says. “Students in our First Year Composition and creative writing programs are truly fortunate to be taught by a writer of Molly McNett’s caliber.”
Entries into “The Best American Short Stories 2014” anthology were selected by best-selling author Jennifer Egan, who won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for “A Visit from the Goon Squad.”
Egan cites McNett’s story in her forward to the anthology.
“If there was a single factor that decided whether a story ended up in my ongoing pile of contenders, it was its basic power to make me lose my bearings, to envelop me in a fictional world,” Egan wrote. “In the case of Molly McNett’s ‘La Pulchra Nota,’ that world unfolds in the year 1399, when a devout singing teacher named John Fuller narrates his own mystical, heartbreaking downfall.”
“La Pulchra Nota,” which translates to “the beautiful note,” is about a 14th century musician in England who falls in love with his singing pupil’s voice.
“I was working on this idea as a modern short story, because I sang in high school, but it felt a little light and silly to me,” says McNett, who has been teaching at NIU since 2001.
“So I went to the NIU music library and got some books about vocal teaching, including its history,” she adds. “That’s where I found the work of a music theorist called Jerome of Moravia, who wrote that one should teach by aspiration to the perfect note, or ‘La Pulchra Nota.’ So I decided to set the story in a time when this idea might be used.”
“La Pulchra Nota” also was chosen for the 2015 Pushcart Prize series, a prestigious anthology which features the “best of the small presses” and will be published later this month.
McNett’s previous works of fiction also received critical praise.
McNett, who also holds a master’s degree in linguistics from NIU, grew up on a cattle farm in Oregon, Ill., and lives not far from her childhood home with husband, Dan Libman, who is also an NIU English instructor, and their two children. At NIU, she teaches four sections of First Year Composition courses two days a week, as well as a fiction class each spring.
“She is a gifted and inspirational writer, a humble scholar and an unassuming, kind instructor,” says Teresa Phillips, an alumnus who took a fiction-writing workshop with McNett in 2012.
Molly McNett
“She provided excellent source materials for modeling and pushed us to try new voices in our writing,” Phillips says. “While she was quick to point out the strengths of our pieces, she was equally relentless in helping us see where we could improve. What I most appreciate is that I felt safe exploring my craft and taking risks with my own writing. She treated us as if we were already professionals.”
McNett says she enjoys her work, both in the classroom and at home, where she tries to write daily.
“It’s easy to teach something I love,” she says. “And I feel fortunate to have a job that allows me time to write. But writing keeps you pretty isolated sometimes, and I enjoy the company of my students a couple days a week – I genuinely like them.”
She adds that there are other perks to working at NIU.
“Maybe the most helpful thing is that my job comes with library privileges, and I can’t say enough about all of our librarians here at NIU,” McNett says. “They’re knowledgeable and extremely helpful, and I feel really lucky to have had their help on the last few pieces I’ve worked on.”
Date posted: October 17, 2014 | Author: Thomas Parisi | Comments Off on NIU English instructor’s fiction makes ‘Best American Short Stories’ for 2014
Keynote speaker Allyson Gold will talk about her work with the Health Justice Project in Chicago in a presentation titled: “You Are Where You Live: The Unjust Relationship Between Housing and Health and What You Can Do About It.”
Gold is an attorney who is a health and housing advocate for low-income individuals and families in Chicago. The Health Justice Project is a medical-legal partnership between Loyola Chicago School of Law and the Erie Family Health Center.
The theme of the conference this year is “The Local and the Global.” Break-out sessions after the keynote will each include talks by two presenters who will approach the session topic from local and global perspectives.
“Last year the goal of the Social Justice Conference was to get the campus community engaged,” said University Honors Fellow and nursing student Lexie Williams, adding that interest in this year’s program demonstrates that the initial goal was reached. The program this month is packed with student groups, campus faculty, alumni, community activists and representatives from local nonprofits.
Williams said the “personally empowering” program gave her the knowledge she needed to advocate for social justice on campus. Part of the program committee this year, she is even more excited about the conference that will tie in “local and global issues like food security, immigration, activism, environmental justice and poverty.”
“Even if you aren’t a sociology or political science major, I can guarantee you’ll get a lot out of this conference,” she said.
Bio-chemistry major Roxanna Moraga remembers last year’s conference as very motivating. She now looks for opportunities to help others.
“By showing kindness and compassion in our daily lives, we can begin to change the world,” she said.
Physical therapy major Jarrett Wolske said although last year’s conference was stimulating and engaging, it didn’t cover two topics that interest him: gender and sexuality issues. Wolske is delighted to see both on this year’s program.
Education major Diana Alday , a member of the program and planning committees, is most excited about the way the conference brings together the local and global. As NIU’s student body becomes more diverse, Alday says, the global and the local will become more intertwined.
The Social Justice Conference attracted more than 110 students and faculty last year. It aligns with the University Honors Program’s mission to promote excellence and engagement through academics, outreach, service and leadership.
The broad range of support from across NIU also speaks to the prescient topic of social justice for the entire campus community.
Co-sponsors with the University Honors Program for the event include Founders Memorial Library, NGOLD, the Latino Resource Center, the College of Education, the Center for Black Studies, Women, the Gender and Sexuality Program, the Student Association, the Office of Equity and Diversity, the departments of Political Science and History, the Office of Student Engagement and Experiential Learning, Americorps Vista and Student Support Services.
For more information, call (815) 753-9505 or email sdawson2@niu.edu.
Date posted: October 9, 2014 | Author: Thomas Parisi | Comments Off on Health Justice Project attorney to speak at NIU Social Justice Conference
One reaches out to students before they ever arrive on campus; the other features prominent alumni among its mentors, including a congresswoman.
The new “Diplomat Program” is perhaps the most unique to campus. Beginning this week, many of the department’s majors will begin serving as peer mentors assigned to high school and community college students who gain admission to NIU and are interested in studying political science.
Students often gain admission to several universities before making their final enrollment decisions.
“We need to convince young people that NIU political science is a great place to study, and who better to do that than the students who love the education they’re getting,” said Matthew Streb, political science chair.
The political science department was already reaching out to prospective students, but the Diplomat Program takes those efforts to a new level.
“We were one of the few departments that would have our students call prospects,” Streb says. “That was better than nothing, but for every 10 calls, our students would leave nine voicemail messages. When they did reach prospective students, those students weren’t prepared to ask questions because it was a cold call.”
In developing the Diplomat Program, Streb’s department worked closely with the NIU Office of Undergraduate Admissions, which is touting the effort at recruitment events. The admissions office also provides Streb’s department with weekly notification of admitted students with an interest in political science.
The political science diplomats will schedule times to talk with admitted students and answer their questions. If a prospect visits campus, the diplomat will be available to meet with the student and parents, provide a department tour and perhaps even take the student along to a class. Should the prospective student choose to attend NIU, then they will already have access to a peer mentor.
“As hip and cool as I think we are in admissions, we are all adults,” says Crystal Garvey, coordinator of university admissions systems. “We think what peers have to say about their education will resonate even more with students who are interested in NIU.”
Garvey adds that the admissions office has high hopes for the Diplomat Program.
“We’re hoping that being paired with one of these diplomats will increase the likelihood of a student committing to NIU,” she says. “It’s a good example of how academic departments can help in recruitment.”
Kymberly Messersmith
The political science department also has tapped into a number of high-profile alumni willing to provide their time and talents to a new mentoring program.
“In most cases, the students are seeking advice on developing their careers after graduation,” he adds. “We try to match student and mentor interests. So, for example, we have law alums mentoring students interested in going to law school. Our D.C. alums have been great in their willingness to develop relationships with students who want to work in our nation’s capital. We even have an FBI agent mentoring a student who wants to work for the law enforcement agency.”
Alumna Kymberly Messersmith, managing director of state government affairs for KPMG, one of the largest professional services firms in the world, is mentoring NIU junior Rachel Gorsuch, who hopes to become a lobbyist.
It’s a perfect fit. Messersmith, who works out of her Washington, D.C. office, has extensive lobbying experience, both on the ground and as a strategist and manager of a staff of lobbyists.
Rachel Gorsuch
Messersmith hopes to help her mentee in such areas as job interviewing, resume writing and planning of career development.
“I benefited from having an informal mentor during my senior year at NIU, so I want to pay it back,” Messersmith says. “Having a mentor helped me to refine my verbal and organizational skills. And it also helped me to think about goals beyond the first two years out of college.”
Messersmith and Gorsuch will touch base via calls, email and Skype and meet in person late in the semester. The formal program will last for a full school year, but the hope is that students and mentors will develop a lasting relationship.
“It seems like a great opportunity to meet someone knowledgeable in the field I want to get into in,” Gorsuch says. “It’s also a great way to get contacts out in the real world.”
The program, which is titled “Fantasy Fiction: Ask the Real Wizards,” will be held at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 14, in Rare Books and Special Collections on the fourth floor of Founders Memorial Library.
The discussion will be geared for a wide range of fantasy-fiction readers, whether interests lean toward the most popular books, the foundational texts or the more obscure gems. Panelists will share their knowledge and recommend their favorite books.
In cooperation with The Big Read program at the DeKalb Public Library, the panel discussion is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.
The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call (815) 753-8091 or email libraryfriend@niu.edu.
Date posted: October 3, 2014 | Author: Thomas Parisi | Comments Off on Friends of NIU Libraries sponsors fantasy fiction discussion
NIU Board of Trustees Chair John Butler, seen here with Ilinois Gov. Pat Quinn, is among the 2014 winners of Distinguished Alumni, Faculty and Staff Awards from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Dean Christopher McCord will present the 2014 awards Friday, Oct. 10, during a dinner program in Altgeld Hall. Award recipients, with links to biographical information, are as follows.
DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD RECIPIENTS
John R. Butler – B.A., Political Science, 1992; M.A., Communication Studies, 1994
John P. Heybach – B.A., M.A. and Ph.D., Psychology, 1972, 1974 and 1976
The Anthropology Museum was the only museum recognized with the award this year.
“Fragments: Haiti Four Years After the Earthquake,” which was on display from January through July 1 of this year, invited visitors to explore the lives and living conditions of Haitian people living “under the tents” since the devastating 2010 earthquake.
Visitors were able to enter a tent provided for people displaced from their homes by the earthquake and view artifacts of tent life. Reproductions of a dwelling in one of Port-au-Prince’s shantytowns helped recreate the experience of life as a Haitian today. A number of Haitian activists also spoke during the exhibit’s run, so visitors could learn how to help and make a difference.
The exhibition was based upon more than 13 years of research by Mark Schuller, an NIU professor of anthropology and NGO Leadership Development and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti. Schuller’s research on NGOs, gender, globalization and disasters in Haiti has been widely published.
The Superior Achievement Award committee members and peer reviewers were “immensely impressed with all aspects of ‘Fragments,’ from the exhibit itself to the related programming and evaluation,” the award letter reads. “It is obvious the exhibit made a significant impact on visitors.”
Jennifer Kirker Priest, director of the Anthropology Museum, said she and her staff were honored by the recognition.
“For our friends in Haiti, this exhibition was something so extraordinary that we are really excited to share this award with them,” Kirker Priest said.
“Their disbelief that Americans would be interested in their story moved us. Indeed, the experience of turning Dr. Mark Schuller’s work into a museum exhibition involved an emotional connection between museum staff and Schuller’s friends in Haiti. To be able to share this news with them is a victory – for them and for the museum.”
The Illinois Association of Museums provides advocacy, promotes best practices and fosters the exchange of ideas for the Illinois museum community.
For more information on the NIU Anthropology Museum, call (815) 753-2520 or email anthromuseum@niu.edu.
Date posted: October 1, 2014 | Author: Thomas Parisi | Comments Off on Illinois Association of Museums praises NIU Anthropology Museum exhibit
NIU student Angela Burke hails from blue-collar Burbank, Ill.
With its prevalence of mom-and-pop restaurants and the regular roar of low-flying passenger jets from Chicago’s Midway Airport nearby, the southwest suburb certainly seems more city.
So, for a week in August, it must have seemed to Burke like she was on another planet – or perhaps living in a time warp – as she stepped out each morning onto the front porch of a little yellow farmhouse, a cup of coffee in hand.
A symphony of songbirds. A pink-haloed sunrise. A misty, endless prairie of tall grass, dotted with sunflowers, forbs and coneflowers in shades of pink, purple and yellow.
Welcome to the gloaming hours of dawn at Nachusa Grasslands preserve, near Dixon, Ill., just a 45-minute drive from the Northern Illinois University campus. It provides a stunning reminder of what the “Prairie State” looked like once upon a time.
“It was breathtaking and overwhelming,” says Burke, a 26-year-old graduate student in biology who spent six days and nights in a small researchers’ residence at the preserve. “It truly felt like I had been shot into the past.”
Angela Burke
Burke, along with a host of other NIU student and faculty researchers, couldn’t be more excited about a new remnant of prairies past that was recently added to the Nachusa Grasslands scenery: the magnificent bison, the largest mammal on the North American continent.
Quick note on bison vs. buffalo: Both are acceptable terms for the layman – after all, the legendary showman wasn’t dubbed Bison Bill. But the two main buffalo species actually reside in Africa and Asia. Bison is the correct scientific term for the North American species, which was last known to roam Illinois in the early 1800s.
Owned and operated by The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit conservation organization, Nachusa Grasslands demonstrates how prairies can make a comeback. World-renowned for its restoration strategies, the preserve’s 3,500 acres also have become a living laboratory for NIU scientists and students.
And research efforts are ramping up with the reintroduction of the shaggy behemoths of the Great Plains, which once numbered in the tens of millions nationwide before becoming nearly extinct.
“Nachusa is reintroducing bison to help regain the ecosystem function lost in their absence,” Jones says. “Native grazers such as bison historically helped maintain prairie, but they were driven to near-extinction through hunting, agriculture and development.”
NIU Professor Holly Jones in one of her laboratory’s study plots at Nachusa Grasslands.
In early October, Nachusa welcomed 20 new bison from a genetic line saved by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905, creating the first wild herd east of the Mississippi River. The hope is to grow the herd to 100 animals.
Experts believe the Nachusa bison will further restore the prairie’s biodiversity. For example, a landscape with a patchwork of both grazed and ungrazed areas provides habitat for more species of birds. Wallows created by bison tend to puddle during springtime and create breeding areas for amphibians. Insects feed off bison dung, expand their populations and become meals for birds and other small animals.
Scientists want to know more about this web of life.
“We know a lot about how vegetation does under prairie restoration and management with bison grazing, but we have very little information on how animals respond,” Jones says. “This is the first time bison have been reintroduced to restored prairie, so our research will for the first time document the effects of bison restoration on animal communities that are themselves responding to plant restoration.”
Jones’ NIU laboratory is beginning studies on how the bison’s presence will effect populations of grassland birds, small mammals and deer. She has six students working on projects, including Burke, who this past August trapped and tagged voles, ground squirrels and several varieties of mice. Burke is returning for additional trappings this month and other times over the course of the school year.
“I took one of Dr. Jones’ classes as a student-at-large, and she was truly an inspiring teacher,” Burke says. “It led to me taking on her small-mammal project.
“I was drawn to this study because, being an Illinois native and knowing that prairies are (among) the most threatened ecosystems globally, I feel like a piece of my own heritage has been lost,” Burke adds. “So with this project, I feel like I’ll be giving back to the state that I love.”
Senior Ryan Blackburn helped trap small mammals at Nachusa as part of an Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship.
Meanwhile, other NIU professors are lending their research expertise to Nachusa and using the prairie to create hands-on learning experiences for scores of students.
“It’s a very interesting preserve to study right now,” says Nachusa project manager Bill Kleiman, who also happens to be an NIU alumnus. “This is new for us, for Illinois and the Midwest, and we want to study the effects of the bison on plants, insects, birds, animals and streams.”
Kleiman said three state universities and several from outside Illinois are involved in research at the preserve.
“We’ve been trying to line up researchers to gather baseline data and help us record what happens over time,” Kleiman says. “NIU features prominently among the scientists working here. In terms of numbers of researchers, it’s the biggest.”
Not only will society benefit from the work, but so do students who gain opportunities to learn alongside experts in the field.
“I’ve gained experience by learning how to collect samples and working with professors and other students, and I’m also gaining a better understanding of the prairie itself,” says Rachel Farrell of DeKalb. The 40-year-old, non-traditional student is a senior Environmental Studies major.
Professor Nicholas Barber (left) leads a field trip to Nachusa Grasslands.
Farrell received an Undergraduate Research Assistantship to work with Professor Goldblum and has been visiting the grasslands regularly since May, monitoring soil respiration. She’s eager to see the benefits that will be derived from the addition of bison.
“The potential for what we can learn is huge,” she says. “And the idea we’re bringing this native animal back to this area is fantastic to me.”
While many students work one-on-one with NIU scientists, entire classes also visit the Nachusa Grasslands for engaged-learning experiences. Professor Barber took two ecology classes to the preserve earlier this semester.
“It’s an invaluable resource for field trips, to be able to let students experience a high quality prairie ecosystem like this,” says Barber, whose laboratory has been conducting research at Nachusa for the past three years.
“We’ll be working out there for many years to come, so I see this as a way to recruit students,” he adds. “Nachusa gives us a glimpse of what the prairies looked like hundreds of years ago. Having the bison grazing there makes that view even more exciting.”
Date posted: September 29, 2014 | Author: Thomas Parisi | Comments Off on Where the buffalo roam (once again)
When it comes to sustainable technology, NIU students are learning that sometimes what’s old is new.
Alexis Hitzeroth and Ben Stone, both environmental studies majors, worked with two international nonprofit organizations, CATIS and Isla Mexico, for 19 days in Mexico this past summer to learn more about the methods employed there to address local environmental issues.
The two seniors told of their excitement about the ways that old and new technologies were combined to help on issues such as flooding, clean-water availability and urban gardening.
Isla Mexico, which tackles clean-water issues, works with the local population in and around Mexico City to provide systems for rainwater catchment in an effort to put a new spin on old technology.
“In Mexico, the local population does not have a lot of money and needs to find alternatives to more expensive technologies,” Hitzeroth said. “Isla Mexico’s goal is to find alternatives to expensive technologies that can be retrofitted to existing spaces. Rooftop rainwater catchment systems can be fixed by the homeowner and don’t require a lot of maintenance. They last a long time and can help people attain portable water for a variety of uses, such as cleaning and drinking.
“Talking to the people first is a big step that many people skip,” she added. “They assume that a society needs something without asking. By talking to the local people, you can actually meet their needs.”
Ben Stone
Stone was impressed by another way that people in Mexico are tapping into history to provide for the local population. When adapting technologies, it’s important to experience and understand local culture, he said.
“For example, spirulina, a blue-green algae that was once harvested by the Aztecs, has been making a comeback to increasing one’s health,” Stone said. “One of the ancient spirulina gene lines was located and is now cultivated on CATIS ranch lands for sale to the local population and abroad.”
The NIU students also learned about biodigestors, first-flush systems and floating gardens called chinampas.
“This was one of the best summer school experiences in my whole life,” said Hitzeroth, who traveled extensively during her time in the military.
Stone is excited over the prospect of doing an internship next summer near Austin, Texas, where he would research the best construction uses for compressed earth blocks, which he learned about during this trip.
Both NIU students agree that traveling abroad provides important cultural perspectives necessary to understand before nonprofits can be effective in their work.
It’s important to bring this cultural knowledge home, especially for environmental issues, Stone said, because it helps ground solutions to actual situations.
The complete schedule of the students’ trip lists several of the technologies they learned about, along with links to learn more.
Date posted: September 24, 2014 | Author: Thomas Parisi | Comments Off on Environmental studies majors travel to Mexico to work with nonprofits
NIU Ph.D. student Harsha Panunganti works on the laser system (turned off here) normally used to create electron beams from a photocathode. Photo: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab
The original version of this story was published in Fermilab Today
Lasers are cool, except when they’re clunky, expensive and delicate.
So a collaboration led by RadiaBeam Technologies, a California-based technology firm actively involved in accelerator R&D, is designing an electron beam source that doesn’t need a laser.
The team led by Luigi Faillace, a scientist at RadiaBeam, is testing a carbon nanotube cathode – about the size of a nickel – in Fermilab‘s High-Brightness Electron Source Lab (HBESL) that completely eliminates the need for a room-sized laser system currently used to generate the electron beam.
Fermilab was sought out to test the experimental cathode because of its capability and expertise for handling intense electron beams, one of relatively few labs that can support this project.
Tests have shown that the vastly smaller cathode does a better job than the laser: Professor Philippe Piot, a staff scientist in the Fermilab Accelerator Division and a joint appointee in physics at NIU, says tests have produced beam currents a thousand to a million times greater than the one generated with a laser.
This remarkable result means that electron beam equipment used in industry may become not only less expensive and more compact, but also more efficient. A laser like the one in HBESL runs close to half a million dollars, Piot said, about hundred times more than RadiaBeam’s cathode.
The technology has extensive applications in medical equipment and national security, as an electron beam is a critical component in generating X-rays. And while carbon nanotube cathodes have been studied extensively in academia, Fermilab is the first facility to test the technology within a full-scale setting.
“People have talked about it for years,” said Piot, “but what was missing was a partnership between people that have the know-how at a lab, a university and a company.”
The dark carbon-nanotube-coated area of this field emission cathode is made of millions of nanotubes that function like little lightning rods. At Fermilab’s High-Brightness Electron Source Lab, scientists have tested this cathode in the front end of an accelerator, where a strong electric field siphons electrons off the nanotubes to create an intense electron beam. Photo: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab
Piot and Fermilab scientist Charles Thangaraj are partnering with RadiaBeam Technologies staff Luigi Faillace and Josiah Hartzell and NIU researcher Daniel Mihalcea and Ph.D. student Harsha Panuganti. Just last month, Panuganti received one of the “best paper” awards on a related topic at the Advanced Accelerator Concept workshop in San Jose, Calif.
A U.S. Department of EnergySmall Business Innovation Research grant, a federal endowment designed to bridge the R&D gap between basic research and commercial products, funds the nanotube cathode project. The work represents the kind of research that will be enabled in the future at the Illinois Accelerator Research Center – a facility that brings together Fermilab expertise and industry.
The new cathode appears at first glance like a smooth black button, but at the nanoscale it resembles, in Piot’s words, “millions of lightning rods.”
“When you apply an electric field, the field lines organize themselves around the rods’ extremities and enhance the field,” Piot said. The electric field at the peaks is so intense that it pulls streams of electrons off the cathode, creating the beam.
Traditionally, lasers strike cathodes in order to eject electrons through photoemission. Those electrons form a beam by piggybacking onto a radio-frequency wave, synchronized to the laser pulses and formed in a resonance cavity. Powerful magnets focus the beam. The tested nanotube cathode requires no laser as it needs only the electric field already generated by the accelerator to siphon the electrons off, a process dubbed field emission.
The intense electric field, though, has been a tremendous liability. Piot said critics thought the cathode “was just going to explode and ruin the electron source, and we would be crying because it would be dead.”
One of the first discoveries Piot’s team made when they began testing in May was that the cathode did not, in fact, explode and ruin everything. The exceptional strength of carbon nanotubes makes the project feasible.
Still, Piot continues to study ways to optimize the design of the cathode to prevent any smaller, adverse effects that may take place within the beam assembly. Future research also may focus on redesigning an accelerator that natively incorporates the carbon nanotube cathode to avoid any compatibility issues.
by Troy Rummler, Fermilab Today
Date posted: September 22, 2014 | Author: Thomas Parisi | Comments Off on Nanotube cathode creates more electron beam than large laser system
For Powell and others on the project – including three students from NIU and geologist Reed Scherer, who is among the lead scientists – the expedition is akin to traveling to another planet.
