Spring 2024 Newsletter

I am passionate about conservation ecology and population dynamics. I am specifically interested in understanding how different ecosystems are responding to and being affected by climate change. 

My junior year I travelled to Storm Peak Laboratory at the top of Steamboat Springs with my Atmospheric Chemistry Class! We got to learn about the air pollution research they are conducting up there and how they collect their data—as well as play in the snow. 

Climate change is altering Western United States hydrological cycles, increasing water scarcity, and reducing stream flows and snowpack. These factors, together with population growth, represent novel pressures for regional water resources and associated regulatory institutions. In Colorado, a system of specialized water courts adjudicates all formal water rights disputes and will thus centrally engage with the governance of evolving water resources. In this project, I investigate how Colorado’s water courts may address and adapt to systems challenges posed by climate change. In an effort to complement robust water law scholarship, I explore the following question: how do structural and procedural aspects of Colorado’s water courts influence their response to climate change? My project couple's literature and document review with semi-structured elite interviews of diverse water court practitioners (attorney, water engineer, judge). I identify several dimensions that suggest water courts’ institutional resilience and capacity to engage with potential stressors, including their embrace of data-driven approaches, alternative dispute resolution techniques, and basin-specific jurisdictional designation. Simultaneously, however, I identify potential barriers to equitable, climate-conscious resolution of water disputes, including the accessibility of data and representation, and I examine potential responses. Ultimately, I conclude by considering the broader theoretical relevance of water courts scholarship, signaling its resonance to broader scholarship examining courts in climate change.

 I will be working as the Political Science Paraprofessional next year and hope to continue working on my research!

Factors that make an ecosystem vulnerable to species invasion are not fully understood, yet it is known that disturbance regimes can create opportunities for invasive species. Ecosystem self-organization, specifically the development of banded patterns in arid grasslands, has not been investigated as a kind of disturbance regime. We analyze the spread of invasive Salsola sp. in a Colorado shortgrass prairie ecosystem and hypothesize that Salsola sp. exploits banded pattern formation. The organization of native grasses into bands promotes efficient water use and functions as a resilience mechanism by opening up bare, impermeable intergroves, which direct runoff precipitation downslope towards vegetated groves. Twenty field transects starting at an uphill grove midpoint, running through complete intergrove, and ending at a lower grove midpoint were completed in late September 2024 and were used to determine ground cover type (including Salsola sp, bare ground, and grass) in 50x50cm quadrats. Additionally, we obtained 5-band multispectral aerial imagery by drone and used Maximum Likelihood raster classification in ArcGIS Pro to determine the spatial distribution of Salsola, with specific attention to its relationship with intergrove bare patches.  The analysis of multispectral imagery showed that Salsola sp. density decreased exponentially with distance from bare ground (R2 = 0.5819, n = 12 one-meter distance bands, p = 0.0039). 

Cloud and precipitation prediction poses considerable challenges in many numerical models. The global 13-km resolution System for High-resolution prediction on the Earth-to-Local Domains (SHiELD), a Unified Forecast System (UFS) prototype atmospheric model developed at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), is used to evaluate the prediction accuracy of clouds and precipitation. This research compares cloud and precipitation predictions from the 13-km SHiELD prediction system to observations. In particular, the geographic distribution, probability density function, diurnal cycle, error growth, and quantitative precipitation forecasts are carefully evaluated. In addition, to understand the extent of the prediction accuracy and its dependency on the model's horizontal resolution, I compare the 13-km SHiELD with its 25-km and 6.5-km versions.      

The 13-km SHiELD shows excellent performance in ice water path, geographic mean precipitation, the global probability density function (PDF) for light to medium precipitation, PDF over land's extreme precipitation, and peak precipitation time over the land. However, the complexities of cloud and precipitation prediction have resulted in noticeable biases in predicting the geographic distribution of precipitation, precipitation diurnal cycle, ice and liquid water path, and cloud fraction in SHiELD.       

We find that the SHiELD prediction system exhibits the potential for improving cloud and precipitation prediction using finer horizontal resolutions. Degradation in cloud fraction, ice water path, precipitation error, root mean square error, equitable threat score, area under the curve and fractions skill score occurs when the model's resolution is reduced to 25 km. These comparisons help uncover and understand the biases in the SHiELD system, with the goal of proposing solutions for improving cloud and precipitation prediction.

 I was accepted into the NOAA Lapenta summer internship program to work on a project that is focused on improving the prediction of southern boundary-layer clouds at NOAA ESRL. I'll be starting a PhD in Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami, in the fall, which I'm very excited about and I was just awarded The American Meteorological Society's Graduate Fellowship!

Pronouns: she/her  Graduation year: 2017  Hometown: San Francisco, CA  Currently living in: Homer, AK  Current occupation: Tribal Fish Biologist, Chugach Regional Resources Commission  

What was your experience at CC like as an environmental science major?  I enjoyed the field trips of an environmental science major and did a focus in ecology to take full advantage of the awesome experiences the block plan offered. I took a block in Belize for tropical rainforest and coral reef ecology as well as a block roaming the Rockies with animal ecology. The environmental science program is diverse with a wide range of classes that I found to be formative, but I’m grateful I chose a focus in ecology and had an advisor guide me towards a focus in GIS to help me find a job post-graduation. I also minored in computer science and found it to be incredibly challenging on the block plan. The material was very difficult to learn in 3.5 weeks. I enjoyed studying computer science abroad in Budapest more because I was able to learn on the semester plan which I found to be much easier for those types of classes.