Seminar: Above and Beyond the Beetles - Life and Death at the Fraser Experimental Forest

Abstract: During the early 2000s, a mountain pine beetle outbreak impacted high-elevation watersheds across Colorado and much of western North America. Work conducted at the US Forest Service’s Fraser Experimental Forest and other locations around the State helped to evaluate the impacts of widespread tree mortality on ecosystem processes and watershed nitrogen losses. The insect outbreak coupled with changing patterns of atmospheric deposition provided an opportunity to evaluate how high-elevation catchments respond to disturbance. Overall, these findings may have implications for the current episode of insect mortality occurring along Colorado’s Front Range.

Bio: Chuck Rhoades is a biogeochemist who studies forest watersheds as part of the US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station. His research evaluates linkages between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in managed and unmanaged areas. For the past 23 years he has studied wildfire responses and ecosystem recovery after severe wildfires. Much of his work addresses the role of upland and riparian soils and vegetation in regulating nitrogen and carbon retention and export from forest watersheds and how ecological disturbance and land management alter these processes.

View on site | Email this event

This drive is open to the public. Feel free to invite family members and friends. Our goal is 19 units.

Brought to you by the INSTAAR PRAs

View on site | Email this event

Event Details

👥 For Researchers and Inventors at CU Boulder and Deep Tech Industry Representatives

🗓️ Oct. 14, 2:30-4:30 p.m.

📍 CU Boulder Sustainability, Energy, and Environment Community (SEEC) Building

🎟️ Register Now

View on site | Email this event

This workshop brings together our campus and the varied disciplines and scholars who do this work to build a shared language, community, and pathways toward successful Public Impact Research at CU Boulder, and beyond. A panel of incredible CU Boulder researchers already doing this work will ground the conversation in real examples: how they define impact, how they design for it, and what it took to get there.

Light refreshments will be provided.

View on site | Email this event

Get free tickets on Eventbrite >>

For more than 30 years, scientists at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) have been measuring greenhouse gases and their isotopes — helping to build an exceptionally precise, long-term record of our changing atmosphere. These measurements enable researchers to trace where carbon dioxide and methane come from, where they go, and how the global carbon cycle is changing. Today, INSTAAR’s data support dozens of research projects around the world and help form the basis of intergovernmental reports and policies.

Join INSTAAR on the evening of October 15 for a behind-the-scenes look at this work. Learn how and why INSTAAR scientists measure greenhouse gases, meet the researchers behind the science, and tour our Radiocarbon (C-14) Lab and Stable Isotope Lab (SIL).

5:00 pm — Refreshments and poster showcase about INSTAAR's labs (not just C-14 & SIL).
6:00 pm — Greenhouse gas research at INSTAAR, with Sylvia Michel.
6:20 pm — Q&A panel with Sylvia Michel, Scott Lehman, and Pieter Tans.
6:40 pm — Guided tours of the Stable Isotope and Radiocarbon labs, with posters and refreshments continuing.

Speakers and panelists

Sylvia Michel leads the INSTAAR Stable Isotope Lab team that measures stable isotopes of carbon dioxide and methane from the NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network.

Scott Lehman is the Emeritus Director of INSTAAR’s Laboratory for AMS Radiocarbon Preparation and Research.

Pieter Tans led the NOAA Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases group from 1985 until 2019, and is now a Fellow Emeritus of INSTAAR.

------------------------------------------------

Get your FREE, but limited tickets at Eventbrite >>

------------------------------------------------

Talks are available on Zoom, but not tours. Tickets are not needed for Zoom attendees.

Learn more about the work of Lehman and Tans in a recent INSTAAR news story:
A Q&A with the scientists who built a decades-long record of Earth’s atmosphere

The evening is a part of INSTAAR's 75th anniversary event series.

Paid parking only

The SEEC building is located at 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO 80303. Use the front entrance, shown as a red star on the above map.

You can park in visitor lots 550 or 544. Both have hourly rates that can be paid using the ParkMobile app on your phone or with your credit card at an adjacent pay station. Rates are about $2 per hour until 7 pm and $1 per hour after. For the fastest parking, consider downloading the ParkMobile app at home before the event and launching it upon arrival.

Lot 550 is the closest parking and located on the southwest side of SEEC. If using ParkMobile, the lot should show as zone 63550. Once parked, walk about 2 minutes to get to the front entrance of the SEEC building.

If Lot 550 is full, go to Lot 544 on the south side of the Space Science Building (3665 Discovery Drive). If using ParkMobile, the lot should show as zone 63541. Once parked, walk about 6 minutes to get to the front entrance of the SEEC building.

Make sure you pay for enough time to cover the full event, which runs from 5:00 pm to approximately 8:00 or 8:30 pm, including the posters, talk, Q&A, and lab tours. If you used the ParkMobile app initially, you can later extend your parking time without needing to return to your car. Lots 550 and 544 are enforced 24 hours a day by CU Boulder Parking Services.

ADA-accessible spaces are available in the circle directly in front of the SEEC building as well as in Lot 550.

For quick drop-offs, use the circle near the front entrance of the SEEC building. If necessary, there are a few free 15-minute only spaces there that might be available.

---------

Photo in the background: Rachel Edie changes gas flasks on an INSTAAR mass spectrometer that measures stable isotopes of carbon and oxygen in atmospheric CO2, primarily from the NOAA CMDL Cooperative Air Sampling Network. (Ethan Welty)

---------

See additional INSTAAR75 events >

View on site | Email this event

Now accepting abstracts for student posters!
Due Sept. 1, 2026.

Abstract submission: https://specialevents.asu.edu/scienceimpact

Registration link: https://na.eventscloud.com/cusymposium

Bio
Gary Amy is the Dean’s Distinguished Professor in the College of Engineering at Clemson University. He has formerly held a number of academic appointments throughout the world, including: Visiting Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore; Director of the Water Desalination and Reuse Center at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia; Professor of Water Supply Engineering at the UNESCO- IHE Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands with a joint appointment at the Technical University of Delft; Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he is Emeritus Professor; and at the University of Arizona.

Over a career of 45 years, Dr. Amy has collaborated with faculty, post-docs, and graduate students to make significant research contributions in drinking water quality and treatment, desalination, and wastewater reclamation/reuse, with specific focus areas including membrane science and technology, selective adsorption, natural organic matter characterization, disinfection by-product formation and control, and natural systems. Dr. Amy’s present research focus at Clemson is on emerging low-energy membrane-based desalination technologies for municipal and agricultural applications. He has published over 500 articles in refereed publications and supervised more than 50 PhD students. Dr. Amy is the recipient of the 2017 A. P. Black Research Award from the American Water Works Association. He was recipient of a Fulbright Award for Germany; was invited as Distinguished Lecturer, Korea Brain 21 Program; and was appointed Visiting Scholar at Kyoto University, Japan.

View on site | Email this event

Katherine Lininger

Associate Professor, CU Boulder, Geography

Summary - TBD

Bio - TBD

--------------

INSTAAR Seminar Series

All seminars are hybrid events, in person and via Zoom.

Audience: All are welcome

Location: Online and in SEEC S228. 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO.

View on site | Email this event

Seminar: TBA

Abstract:

Bio:

View on site | Email this event

INSTAAR cohosts are Leanne Lestak and Stef Tasayco

When: The last THURSDAY most months at 12:00 PM. Exceptions often include November (Thanksgiving) and December (Christmas) when we meet on Thursday a week earlier.

Where: SEEC Café (outside weather permitting, or around the corner on the north side of the room).

Who: Everyone is welcome! Practice conversational Spanish over lunch, listen, and refresh your memory.

What: Enjoy a FUN activity to improve foreign language skills, share stories, explore new cultures, and make friends. Don't forget to bring your own lunch!

¡NOS VEMOS AHÍ! (SEE YOU THERE!)

View on site | Email this event

Will Taylor

Associate Professor, CU Boulder, Anthropology

Summary - TBD

Bio - TBD

--------------

INSTAAR Seminar Series

All seminars are hybrid events, in person and via Zoom.

Audience: All are welcome

Location: Online and in SEEC S228. 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO.

View on site | Email this event

Seminar: TBA

Abstract:

Bio:

View on site | Email this event

To meet net-zero carbon emissions targets by mid-century, up to a ~30-fold increase in wind power capacity is required. To expand energy production, wind turbines are rapidly increasing in size, wind farms are proliferating to new locations and are increasing in size and siting density, and novel wind farm design and control methods are increasingly deployed. But current engineering models driving wind power design and control rely on idealized theory that neglects key aspects of rotor operation within the turbulent, stratified, and sheared atmospheric boundary layer, which are increasingly important for larger turbines and farms. We revisit the first-principles of mass, momentum, and energy conservation to develop a Unified Momentum theory for rotors across operating regimes, accounting for arbitrary misalignments between rotor and inflow and thrust coefficients. The model is validated against large eddy simulations and unique high Reynolds number experiments performed in a pressurized wind tunnel. The Unified Momentum Model generalizes and replaces both classical momentum theory and the Betz limit and further reveals a new opportunity to improve wind farm flow control through synergistic combination of wake steering (yaw) control and induction (thrust) control. Moreover, wind turbines always operate in complex atmospheric boundary layer conditions which violate the uniform assumptions in existing rotor aerodynamics theories. We reveal that wind speed and direction shear (veer) trigger rotor efficiency losses that can exceed 20%, are not captured in existing engineering models, and increase as wind turbines grow in size. Going from the scale of a turbine to a farm, wake losses can reduce farm energy by 30%, a significant loss that negatively impacts economics and is increasing given wind power expansion. Using large eddy simulations of wind turbines operating in a range of atmospheric conditions, we systematically uncover the significant roles of Coriolis effects and atmospheric stability on wake recovery, trajectory, and morphology. We develop a new fast-running TANDEM (Turbulence ANd DEficit Momentum) wind farm model which accounts for the coupled rotor operational and atmospheric effects on wakes and yields lower error than existing wake models. We perform collective flow control based on the wind farm model, applied in both simulations and utility-scale field experiments. Full-scale field experiments demonstrate that collective flow control increases the energy generation of wind farms through software modifications, without additional turbines or hardware.

Biography:

Michael F. Howland is the Jeffrey Cheah Career Development Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. He was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Caltech in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. He received his B.S. from Johns Hopkins University and his M.S. from Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His work is focused at the intersection of fluid mechanics, weather and climate modeling, uncertainty quantification, and optimization and control with an emphasis on renewable energy systems. He uses a synergistic combination of simulations, laboratory and field experiments, and theoretical modeling to improve the understanding, efficiency, predictability, and reliability of low-carbon energy systems. At Stanford, he received the Tau Beta Pi scholarship, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and a Stanford Graduate Fellowship. At MIT, he has received the Maseeh Excellence in Teaching Award, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) award, and an NSF CAREER award.

View on site | Email this event

Unraveling interactions between extreme-scale wind power systems and stratified, turbulent environmental flows

Abstract

To meet net-zero carbon emissions targets by mid-century, up to a ~30-fold increase in wind power capacity is required. To expand energy production, wind turbines are rapidly increasing in size, wind farms are proliferating to new locations and are increasing in size and siting density, and novel wind farm design and control methods are increasingly deployed. But current engineering models driving wind power design and control rely on idealized theory that neglects key aspects of rotor operation within the turbulent, stratified, and sheared atmospheric boundary layer, which are increasingly important for larger turbines and farms.

We revisit the first-principles of mass, momentum, and energy conservation to develop a Unified Momentum theory for rotors across operating regimes, accounting for arbitrary misalignments between rotor and inflow and thrust coefficients. The model is validated against large eddy simulations and unique high Reynolds number experiments performed in a pressurized wind tunnel. The Unified Momentum Model generalizes and replaces both classical momentum theory and the Betz limit and further reveals a new opportunity to improve wind farm flow control through synergistic combination of wake steering (yaw) control and induction (thrust) control. Moreover, wind turbines always operate in complex atmospheric boundary layer conditions which violate the uniform assumptions in existing rotor aerodynamics theories. We reveal that wind speed and direction shear (veer) trigger rotor efficiency losses that can exceed 20%, are not captured in existing engineering models, and increase as wind turbines grow in size. Going from the scale of a turbine to a farm, wake losses can reduce farm energy by 30%, a significant loss that negatively impacts economics and is increasing given wind power expansion.

Using large eddy simulations of wind turbines operating in a range of atmospheric conditions, we systematically uncover the significant roles of Coriolis effects and atmospheric stability on wake recovery, trajectory, and morphology. We develop a new fast-running TANDEM (Turbulence ANd DEficit Momentum) wind farm model which accounts for the coupled rotor operational and atmospheric effects on wakes and yields lower error than existing wake models. We perform collective flow control based on the wind farm model, applied in both simulations and utility-scale field experiments. Full-scale field experiments demonstrate that collective flow control increases the energy generation of wind farms through software modifications, without additional turbines or hardware.

Background

Michael F. Howland is the Jeffrey Cheah Career Development Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. He was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Caltech in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. He received his B.S. from Johns Hopkins University and his M.S. from Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

His work is focused at the intersection of fluid mechanics, weather and climate modeling, uncertainty quantification, and optimization and control with an emphasis on renewable energy systems. He uses a synergistic combination of simulations, laboratory and field experiments and theoretical modeling to improve the understanding, efficiency, predictability and reliability of low-carbon energy systems. At Stanford, he received the Tau Beta Pi scholarship, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a Stanford Graduate Fellowship. At MIT, he has received the Maseeh Excellence in Teaching Award, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) award and an NSF CAREER award.

The Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering Distinguished Seminar Series features scholars from a wide range of peer institutions across the country. The events are open to all faculty, staff and students looking to spark their curiosity and learn about high-impact research from some of the world's most prominent experts in mechanical engineering.

View on site | Email this event

Join us for the 2nd annual COSINC Innovation Networking Event!

Thursday, Nov. 12, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., SEEC C120

Lunch and refreshments will be provided, including a networking reception after the poster sessions.

Following the success of last year's inaugural COSINC User Symposium, COSINC invites researchers, students, industry partners and collaborators to a full day of discovery, networking and innovation. Explore the groundbreaking research enabled by COSINC facilities while building connections across academia, industry and government. Learn about emerging technologies, discover new capabilities and engage with the researchers advancing Colorado's innovation ecosystem, including updates on the NSF-funded National Quantum Nanofabrication Facility.

Event Highlights

Faculty and Industry Presentations featuring innovative research projects and emerging technologies3 min research flash talks Networking and career opportunities with industry representatives and research collaboratorsPanel Discussion: From Lab to Market, “Translating University Research into Real-World Impact”Graduate Student/Postdoc Poster Session highlighting research utilizing cleanroom nanofabrication and advanced materials characterization techniquesPoster Awards recognizing outstanding student research contributions
We encourage our users to participate in this event, particularly, the poster session. Your contribution and participation will be central to this event’s success.

View on site | Email this event

Seminar: TBA

Abstract:

Bio:

View on site | Email this event

--------------

1. "Title TBD"

Chase Rakowski

Postdoctoral Scholar, CU Boulder, INSTAAR

Summary - TBD

Bio - TBD

--------------

2. "Title TBD"

Michael Dyonisius

Postdoctoral Scholar, CU Boulder, INSTAAR

Summary - TBD

Bio - TBD

--------------

INSTAAR Seminar Series

All seminars are hybrid events, in person and via Zoom.

Audience: All are welcome

Location: Online and in SEEC S228. 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO.

View on site | Email this event

INSTAAR cohosts are Leanne Lestak and Stef Tasayco

When: The last THURSDAY most months at 12:00 PM. Exceptions often include November (Thanksgiving) and December (Christmas) when we meet on Thursday a week earlier.

Where: SEEC Café (outside weather permitting, or around the corner on the north side of the room).

Who: Everyone is welcome! Practice conversational Spanish over lunch, listen, and refresh your memory.

What: Enjoy a FUN activity to improve foreign language skills, share stories, explore new cultures, and make friends. Don't forget to bring your own lunch!

¡NOS VEMOS AHÍ! (SEE YOU THERE!)

View on site | Email this event

Serendipity in Arctic Quaternary science leads to new frontiers across Beringia

Julie Brigham-Grette

Professor, Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst

INSTAAR launched my Arctic research career, beginning with fieldwork on coastal Baffin Island and culminating in a traverse of the Cumberland Peninsula. Serendipity then drew me to investigate the Plio-Pleistocene sea-level history in the Bering Strait and the shared paleoclimate record across the Bering Land Bridge. Today using new tools and collaborations, I remained focused on synthesizing Arctic Ocean, borderland, and gateway histories and hope to convening scientists across disciplines—from mantle to atmosphere—to advance and communicate research on Beringia’s role as both a high-latitude marine gateway and terrestrial bridge.

Bio - Julie Brigham-Grette (University of Massachusetts Amherst) brings 48 years (yikes) of expertise in Arctic climate change, with research grounded in the oceanic and terrestrial sediment records of Beringia. Her work spans the last several million years, including the history of Arctic sea ice, sea level, and landscape evolution in the western Arctic; she is currently collaborating with the communities of Mekoryuk and Kongiganak, Alaska, through the NSF Navigating the New Arctic Program to address present and future landscape change. Following her time at INSTAAR in 1985, she completed postdoctoral research in Bergen, Norway, on North Sea cores and then spent two years with the Geological Survey of Canada in Edmonton working in the Beaufort Sea; she is especially proud of her 16-year leadership in drilling Lake El’gygytgyn in northeastern Arctic Russia, which recovered a 3.6-million-year record of Arctic climate evolution from the Arctic borderlands.

--------------

INSTAAR 75th Anniversary Seminar Series

All seminars are hybrid events, in person and via Zoom.

Audience: All are welcome

Location: Online and in SEEC S228 & other rooms. 4001 Discovery Drive, Boulder, CO.

View on site | Email this event

Join us or the ENVS + MENV Colloquium series. Food will be served starting at 12:30 to foster community prior to each talk. Talks are held from 1:00-2:00pm.

View on site | Email this event

INSTAAR cohosts are Leanne Lestak and Stef Tasayco

When: The last THURSDAY most months at 12:00 PM. Exceptions often include November (Thanksgiving) and December (Christmas) when we meet on Thursday a week earlier.

Where: SEEC Café (outside weather permitting, or around the corner on the north side of the room).

Who: Everyone is welcome! Practice conversational Spanish over lunch, listen, and refresh your memory.

What: Enjoy a FUN activity to improve foreign language skills, share stories, explore new cultures, and make friends. Don't forget to bring your own lunch!

¡NOS VEMOS AHÍ! (SEE YOU THERE!)

View on site | Email this event