Website authors
Melissa Mora
Originally from San José, Costa Rica, Mora is a 2006 graduate of the Environmental Engineering Program at CU-Boulder. She did the bulk of the research for this site in the summer of 2006 while participating in an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) for Environmental Fluids: Science, Assessment and Treatment at CU-Boulder. She was also supported by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program at CU-Boulder. In the picture above she presents curriculum she designed on renewable energy to CU students from the School of Education (2005).
Diane McKnight
McKnight is a professor at CU-Boulder, with appointments in Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering and the Environmental Studies Program. She is also a Fellow at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. McKnight specializes in limnology, aquatic ecology, reactive transport of metals and organic material in streams and rivers.
David Lubinski
Lubinski is a web designer and research scientist at CU-Boulder. He has been creating websites that support environmental science since 2000. He has a PhD in Geological Sciences from CU-Boulder, specializing in Quaternary history of the Russian Arctic.
Assistance
Lee Stanish, Rhea Esposito, Amber Roche, and Josh Koch (all INSTAAR) provided great assistance to Melissa Mora during all phases of her REU research.
Whitney Gant and Thomas Nylen photographed the banner images at the top of each page. The images were extracted from 360-degree panoramas created in January 2001 (Tour of McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica).
Institutional support
NSF REU Site at CU-Boulder:
Environmental Fluids: Science, Assessment and Treatment
The National Science Foundation sponsors a Research Experience for Undergraduates site at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the Environmental Engineering Department. The student research projects focus on water quality and treatment, air quality monitoring and control, and the impact of climate variability on water resources.
Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program
at CU-Boulder (UROP).
UROP creates research partnerships between faculty and undergraduate students. Undergraduate students at all academic levels--freshmen through senior--can participate in UROP because of the broad range of initiatives that are offered. UROP is a campus-wide program, supporting students from all schools and colleges in all academic disciplines.
McMurdo Long-Term Ecological Research
The McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER project is an interdisciplinary study of the
aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in a cold desert region of Antarctica.
It is supported by the National Science Foundation. The MCM LTER project was essential to the collection and analysis of
the bacterial data presented on this web site and also hosts this web site.
National Science Fountation
NSF supported field research, sample processing, web site creation, and undergraduate education through a number of grants that span more than a decade. The grants include MCM-LTER science projects as well as Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU), and Partnerships for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy (PEET).
Institute of Arctic & Alpine Research
INSTAAR, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is the home institute for the scientists managing this web site. The Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) develops scientific knowledge of natural and anthropogenic physical and biogeochemical environmental processes at local, regional and global scales, and applies this knowledge to improve society's awareness and understanding of environmental change.