When it comes to climate change, one big question is how are ecosystems adapting to shifting weather patterns, heavier precipitation events, and hotter temperatures for longer periods of time?  Are some plants better equipped to withstand these changes than others?  And if yes, then why and how? 

Jacob Levine is a Wilkes Center Postdoctoral scholar here at the University of Utah.  He is interested in how climate change is impacting plant ecosystems.  Specifically, when rainstorms occur less frequently, but more intensely than before – as they have in California -- how are plants responding?  So far, he says, his findings are intriguing.    

Dr. Levine has also been interested in how high severity wildfires are impacting publicly managed forest lands in California compared with privately managed lands for timber harvesting.  The goal of his research is to understand what types of forest management are beneficial for ecosystems and which types are not.  This question has been subject to a rancorous policy debate between forest managers.   For his part, Levine hopes his research can better inform better forest management practices overall, in ways that benefit and improve forestry for timber and supporting healthy ecosystems overall. 

So, here is my conversation with Jacob Levine.

wilkescenter.utah.edu/podcast/29-how-are-plant-ecosystems-adapting-to-the-shifting-climate/

(Featured image: University of California Sedgwick Natural Reserve in northern Santa Barbara County California. Photo Courtesy of Jacob Levine)

The Wilkes Center recently hosted its 3rd annual climate solutions hackathon at the end of January.  This year the focus was water resources. The “hackathon” as we’ve come to call it – borrowing the term from the computer coding world – is an intense problem-solving competition where we challenge U of U undergraduate and graduate students from any discipline to team-up and develop proposals in a slide deck within 24 hours.

We asked students to propose an innovative, data-driven solution in one of five categories:

1. Municipal Water Supply
2. Inland and Coastal Flooding
3. Agriculture
4. Drought
5. Water and Energy Infrastructure

Ultimately, each team was graded on how we they addressed important factors, such as: Problem definition and analysis; Uniqueness and innovation;  Idea feasibility; and Implementation and scalability. Over 90 students participated in this year’s water hackathon, with 17 impressive projects submitted by the end.  Only the top 3 teams were received awards.  And recently, I spoke with the team members of the winning team, whose members include: 

Sam Carter, Baylee Olds, Tyler Yoklavich -- each of them graduate students studying hydrology.  Their hackathon solution – titled “SmartFLOW City Program” formulated a program to connect municipal water managers with water researchers in academia.  Essentially, they envisioned a program to encourage cities to enhance their water-resilience tool box with various cutting edge techniques being developed by folks in academia.  Bridging on-the-ground management and emerging modern science.  

So, here’s my conversation with Team SmartFLOW.  I hope you enjoy it.

Perovskites are crystal structures that can be manufactured in labs for making solar panels.  They are relatively cost-effective, and efficient, and could provide a reliable thin-film alternative to the more common silicon-based solar panels.  

However, perovskite solar cells face a few challenges that must be addressed before they can become a competitive commercial PV technology. In some forms they can be unstable, and lead can be a toxic byproduct when processing them. And yet, perovskite-based materials also could have green energy potential beyond solar as batteries and alternatives to modern refrigerants that use chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which are strong greenhouse gases.

That’s why Jyorthana Muralidhar is fascinated by perovskites. She is a Wilkes Center-funded postdoctoral researcher working in Professor Connor Bischak’s Lab, in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Utah. There she spends her time manipulating 3-dimensional, 2-dimensional, and 1-dimensional perovskite crystals into various combinations and shapes – all with the hope of discovering a new combination that could become the next clean energy breakthrough.   

Recently, Jyorthana had some time to talk about her research.  

There are an estimated 54,000 glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayas. These glaciers cover 60,000 square kilometers and serve as a major source of the water in the region’s rivers, including as much as 40 percent in the Indus River system - the backbone of agriculture and food production in Pakistan, for example. But in recent decades glaciologists – those who study glaciers – are concerned with how fast Himalayan glaciers are melting, and what that could mean for the more than a billion people downstream who depend on these glaciers for agriculture, fresh water, energy production, and basic livelihood.

Smriti Srivastava is a Wilkes Center Postdoctoral Research Associate in the School of Environment, Society & Sustainability at the University of Utah.  She has studied Himalayan glaciers throughout her academic and research career, which has included several field expeditions to study the glaciers up close. 

(Featured image: Smriti Srivastava’s photo of her research team led by Prof. Mohd. Farooq Azam, with the Indian Institute of Technology Indore, while hiking the Drang-Drung Glacier at 5300 m a.s.l in September 2023, one of the largest glaciers in the Himalaya-Karakoram mountain range. Photo credit: Himanshu Kaushik)

https://wilkescenter.utah.edu/podcast/26-sizing-up-the-melting-glaciers-of-the-himalayas/

It’s true the Earth has experienced periods of global warming in its past.  The largest such warming event in the past 90 million years - since the time dinosaurs roamed Earth - was the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, about 56 million years ago.  Average global temperatures increased by 4–5°C over a period of 3,000–10,000 years.  Human beings were definitely not walking the Earth back then, but today scientists are able to piece together evidence of how and why this ancient global warming happened.  

Spoiler alert? It was caused by greenhouse gas emissions, likely stemming from carbon cycle feedbacks – the processes that unlocked and released more and more CO2 from the Earth’s surface as it warmed, and volcanism - the eruption of volcanoes.

Dustin Harper is a marine geologist postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Utah. He, along with U Geology professor Gabe Bowen, published a study where they examined tiny, microscopic shell fossils taken from drilling cores in the ocean floor, that revealed important information about ancient sea surface temperatures and the levels of atmospheric CO2 . They found sea surface temperatures were closely linked with levels of atmospheric CO2  during this period.  

This helps us to understand the sensitivities of our planet and the feedback mechanisms that can kick in during periods of rapid global warming triggered by greenhouse gas emissions, which is what we are experiencing today – with anthropogenic climate change - albeit at a much faster rate.  Like, 4 to 10 times faster than occurred during those ancient hyperthermal events.
https://wilkescenter.utah.edu/podcast/25-climate-sherlocking-dustin-harper/

"Eco-anxiety" or "Climate grief" are increasingly part of our lexicon when it comes to describing the heavy feelings of concern people are feeling about the state of our natural environment and global climate change. This past year, Jennifer Follstad Shah, associate professor in the School of the Environment, Society and Sustainability, along with her colleague Andrea Brunelle, and other co-PIs on the project including Adrienne Cachelin, Monika Lohani, Sara Yeo, and Lynne Zummo conducted a study among undergraduate students across the University of Utah to ascertain how students are experiencing symptoms of eco-anxiety, and to understand how students are effectively coping with it.  In September 2024, they presented their results, and so I wanted to talk with Jennifer and Andrea them both to learn more.   
https://wilkescenter.utah.edu/podcast/24-climate-anxiety-at-the-u/

Dr. Jon Wang, an Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences here at the U, manages the Dynamic Carbon and Ecosystems Lab, or DYCE Lab.  He has access to high-resolution airborne laser scanning data to map forests across the world to measure to set benchmarks for that data and monitor for changes.  Wang is interested in how climate change and human activity are rapidly transforming terrestrial ecosystems such as with wildfire, timber harvest, urbanization, and drought.  Dr. Jon Wang’s work could be crucial to understand how forests are changing as the world looks to applying nature-based climate solutions in the coming years.
wilkescenter.utah.edu/podcast/23-monitoring-forests-as-they-change/

In September this year, the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy awarded Applied Carbon, the climate tech company based in Houston, Texas, the $500,000 Wilkes Climate Launch Prize.

Applied Carbon, formerly Climate Robotics, is a technology company designing automated biochar production machines that convert in-field agricultural crop waste into biochar.

Jason Aramburu, who is a Co-founder and CEO of the company, has researched biochar since he was an undergraduate student at Princeton, and in the last 15 years he and a partner have been developing a technology to utilize biochar for large commercial agricultural operations.

Biochar was in fact produced by Indigenous farmers in Central and South America for thousands of years to improve crop yields. It is made heating plant matter to high temperatures and applying it to the soil.  And, as it turns out, biochar could also be a promising and durable way to remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Jason Aramburu visited Salt Lake City to receive the Wilkes Climate Prize, and I was fortunate to have some time to talk with him about the success of his biochar startup, and how he envisions his biochar technology becoming a climate change solution and making a positive impact on commercial agriculture more broadly.

wilkescenter.utah.edu/podcast/22-interview-with-applied-carbon/

If you’ve taken a hike or a drive through northern Utah’s forests recently, you may have noticed that some areas of the forests are changing and looking a little sick.  Northern Utah’s forests are increasingly experiencing an infestation of a tiny non-native insect called balsam woolly adelgid (or BWA), that’s slowly attacking subalpine fir which are among the most common conifers in the Wasatch Mountains. Dr. Mickey Campbell was the lead author of a recently published study that maps the spread of balsam woolly adelgid in Utah.  He’s a research assistant professor in the Department of Geography (soon to be renamed the School of Environment, Society, and Sustainability.) I had the chance to talk with him about doing the study and what it means for the future of our forests, as well as his generally philosophy on doing solutions-focused science that can hopefully lead to real-life impacts to policies and practices.  So, with that, here’s our conversation.
Website:
wilkescenter.utah.edu/podcast/20-mapping-the-infestation-of-balsam-woolly-adelgid-in-utah-forests/