INSTAAR has announced its Summer Scholars for 2024: Natalie Aranda and Jed Lenetsky. The scholars will each be awarded a stipend for the summer months to continue their research projects.

These diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) scholarships are designed to increase support for students from communities that are historically marginalized in the Earth sciences, and to be concrete commitments toward INSTAAR’s mission of becoming an inclusive and anti-racist institute.

Natalie and Jed shared some key themes of their research and summer plans below. 

See also: a followup Q&A. 

Natalie Aranda (CEAE) is evaluating the role of tardigrades as grazers in ephemeral Antarctic streams

What will you be working on this summer?

My research is looking into the trophic interactions between diatoms, which are siliceous based brown algae, and tardigrades. In the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, where my research focus is, there are ephemeral streams in which microbial mats grow. We know that diatoms live in these mats. And we know that there are invertebrates such as tardigrades, nematodes, and rotifers all coexisting in these mats. However, much of the research that has come out of the McMurdo LTER has stated that there is no grazing being done to the diatom population.

But there likely at least some grazing going on, because these invertebrates live in the steams. And elsewhere in the world where there are diatoms and tardigrades, we know that they feed on diatoms. But no one’s quite looked at it yet.

I had the very fortunate opportunity to participate in McMurdo LTER for two field seasons. I got to collect the samples that I’m analyzing now.

What will the scholarship enable you to do?

It’s giving me the opportunity to focus strictly on my research, which is so amazing. I was supported on a teaching assistantship this past semester, and it was incredibly hard, between classes and TA responsibilities, to try to find time to do my research. So this summer, I’m excited to just focus on my research. It’s very microscope intensive, so it’s not the type of thing I can do in between classes or in my down time. I have to come into lab.

I’m looking at these slides that I’ve made from the samples I collected in the Dry Valleys, and I’m counting to see how many diatoms are in the slides. I’m also checking to see if they have chloroplasts present, which would indicate if they were alive when they were collected. And if we’re seeing there’s a high proportion of tardigrades in a sample and a high proportion of diatoms that are lacking chloroplasts, then that could be a connection showing that they’re being grazed upon.

I’ve already begun to analyze the relationship between tardigrade abundance and how many cells I find with or without chloroplasts. But I haven’t finished that aspect of my research. And so I want to continue to count those slides.

The research process requires a lot of thinking. When I’ve got the data—let’s see how it connects, how I can visualize it. That takes a lot of time that I didn’t have during the semester.

What do you like to do when you’re not sciencing?

I feel like there’s two sides of me. One side likes to get out. I’m originally from California, so this is my third year in Colorado. There’s a lot of Colorado I haven’t seen. I love to go explore different nature spots; I like hiking and exploring.

The other side of me likes to stay home. I love to paint—I’ve been an avid painter my whole life. I work on big pieces, usually commissions that my friends and family have given me. I make landscape paintings or cityscape paintings. That’s my creative outlet.

Jed Lenetsky (ATOC) is forecasting the future of Baffin Bay and its ecosystems in a changing climate

What will you be working on this summer?

This summer I’m focused on finishing up two different projects, both related to how the ocean in Baffin Bay is changing. Baffin is a critical region between the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and western Greenland, and it’s a region where you have lots of interactions between waters leaving the Arctic Ocean and entering the north Atlantic, and waters from the north Atlantic entering Baffin Bay. All these waters have very different properties.

One of these projects is looking at is a specific region in the northern tip of Baffin Bay called the North Water Polynya, which has one of the most productive ecosystems in the Arctic Ocean. We’re looking at climate models to understand how the North Water Polynya is going to change under different levels of global warming. We’re basically using a few different climate model simulations developed at NCAR that limit warming in a few different scenarios: 1.5 degrees, 2 degrees, and a business-as-usual scenario of warming over 3.5 degrees Celsius. This is different from a lot of climate models that have      temperatures increasing with time. What this allows us to do is understand the impacts to this region at very specific warming levels that are policy relevant. One of the things that we found is that if we limit warming to under 2 degrees Celsius, we can really avoid large negative impacts to the ecosystem in the North Water Polynya. But we begin to see really large negative impacts to the ecosystem if warming goes above 2 degrees.

The second project I’m working on—there’s an array of ocean instruments in the southern end of Baffin Bay, in the Davis Strait. You basically have a string of measurements going across that strait that tell us how much salt, how much heat, and how much water from these different regions are coming in and out of Baffin Bay. Currently, the published record of these ocean transport only goes from 2004 to 2010. I’m working to extend that record from 2004 to 2022. It’s going to significantly increase our understanding of how ocean waters are exchanged between the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.

We know from our North Water Polynya paper that the amount of water from the North Atlantic coming into Baffin Bay plays a really large role in ecosystem productivity and how that’s going to change under different levels of global warming. So understanding how those ocean transports are changing now, over this record, is really important.

What will the scholarship enable you to do?

The North Water Polynya project came out of a grant on which Alex [Jahn], my advisor, was a co-PI on the grant and Anne Jennings was the lead PI, looking at past/present/future changes in the North Water Polynya. The paper came out of that work, but that grant has since expired.

So what this scholarship is allowing me to do is basically publish this work.

What do you like to do when you’re not sciencing?

Right now I’m really into getting my garden sorted out, now that it’s finally safe to plant things outside—I feel like the risk of snow is lower now.

I also really like cycling and hiking and running and trail running—basically all kinds of outdoor things.

Related Articles

On May 8th, we came together as a community to eat, present awards, and recognize our MS and PhD graduates. Many INSTAARs attended, along with the families of our graduates and award winners. Congratulations to all! And thank you to the organizers and photographers (Patti Newton, Marisa Seitz, Mallory Barndollar, Nikki Lovenduski, et al.).

  Congratulations to our award winners

Natalie Aranda & Jed Lenetsky
Summer Scholars

Q&A with Natalie Aranda & Jed Lenetsky

Wendy Roth
Professional Research Assistant Award

More about Wendy Roth & her award

Tina Geller
Graduate Student Community Award

More about Tina Geller & her award

Katie Gannon
Sarah Crump Memorial Graduate Fellowship

Q&A with Katie Gannon

  Congratulations to our INSTAAR graduates

• Jared Collins: MS Environmental Engineering

• Denise Mondragon: MS Geography

• Briana Prado: MS Geography

• Tessa Gorte: PhD Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

• Holly Olivarez: PhD Environmental Studies

After a hooding ceremony, Tessa Gorte (PhD Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences) is recognized by her advisor and INSTAAR Interim Director Nikki Lovenduski.

Holly Olivarez (PhD Environmental Studies) is hooded by her advisor and INSTAAR Interim Director Nikki Lovenduski.

  Special thanks

Thanks to Sarah Crump’s family (John Crump, Liz Anderson, and Nodin de Saillan) for attending the event and continuing to honor her legacy and memory, and creating this fellowship to continue fostering bright, scientific talent well into the future. Learn about the Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship

A group photo for Katie Gannon, the 2024 winner of the Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship. Gannon is flanked by Sarah Crump's parents, Liz Anderson and John Crump, as well as Sarah's PhD advisor Giff Miller (far left) and Sarah's partner, Nodin de Saillan (top).

Thanks and congratulations to Jose Constancia, our INSTAAR front office intern, for his years of dedicated service to the institute and his completion of his graduate degree in Business Management. We wish you good luck and all the best!

Operations Manager Patti Newton recognizes front office student intern Jose Constancia. Jose has been an amazing intern for several years and is graduating in the class of 2024 with a degree in Management from Leeds School of Business.

Front office staff photo after the luncheon, including a former member! From left: Chrystal Pochay (former staff), Marisa Seitz, Jean Lindahl (front), Lindsay McCandless (behind), Jose Constancia, Patti Newton, Chad Stoffel, Heather Stoffel (front), Becky Miller (behind), and Mallory Barndollar.

Learn more about Joe/Jose

Thank you again to all the wonderful students, faculty, and staff who make INSTAAR such a fantastic place to learn and work. As our Director Nikki Lovenduski said during the luncheon: INSTAAR is really about people, and it was great to have the opportunity to celebrate the people who make INSTAAR such a unique research institution. We hope everyone has a wonderful summer!

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Incoming PhD student Katie Gannon (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) has garnered this year’s Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship. She will investigate greenhouse gas emissions from seasonally ice-covered lakes, working with advisor Bella Oleksy.

Gannon is returning to CU Boulder, where she was an undergraduate student, after earning her master’s degree from Montana State University. She was most recently the lab manager for the Holgerson Lab at Cornell University, and before that was a wilderness instructor and naturalist working to expand equitable access to wilderness and the outdoors.

We asked Katie about her research, plans for the summer, and life as a scientist and outdoor advocate.

Q: What is your research about?

Lakes and inland waters produce a lot of greenhouses gases—most people don’t realize that. They’re creating methane and CO₂ [carbon dioxide]. Lakes in high places are especially interesting, because they have ice cover during the cold part of the year. Think of the ice as a lid, a kind of layer that keeps the greenhouse gases from coming out. We don’t know exactly what is going on under that lid or what happens in spring when the ice melts. That introduces a lot of uncertainty about where greenhouse gases are coming from as we look at inputs into climate change.

It’s still a pretty big unknown. When the ice melts, what happens? Do the gases come out in one big burp, or more gradually? How do we measure it? If we miss ice off, how does that throw off our measurements?

My work is to look at accumulation rates of greenhouse gases under the ice and release in the spring.

Q: What will you be working on this summer as part of your Crump Fellowship?

Doing field research in New England.

We’ll choose which five lakes we’re going to use. I’ll spend time scouting and finding lakes. Working in alpine areas, you have all these big gradients in a small space. It’s really, really nice as a study system. I also just love the mountains, so it’s a fun place to be.

We’ll be able to instrument all these lakes. And I’d like to build these sensors—I’ve been working with a collaborator of mine, Jonas Stage Sø at the University of Southern Denmark who did his PhD on building machines that are $400 each and continuously measure CO₂ and methane. Whereas, the lab-based machines are closer to $40,000 each. We want to bring in and deploy these machines in Green Lakes Valley.

I’m also trying to pilot some methods this summer. There are a lot of ways to measure greenhouse gases. I’ll be working with Kevin [Rozmiarek] and Sylvia [Michel] in the Stable Isotope Lab to look at greenhouse gas abundance and isotopes. One of the best things about being here is all of the collaboration and cross-pollination.

Also just sitting with the data and looking at it!

Q: You’ve been involved in many adaptive programs for equity in the outdoors—can you tell us about that?

On a trail run in the alpine.

A thing that’s really, really important to me is improving access to the outdoors and access to science.

A bad accident in high school meant I was in a wheelchair for a while. And getting out into nature or into science is a lot harder with any kind of disability.

I’ve taught a lot of adaptive skiing to people with different physical abilities and who are neurodiverse.

It’s easy for adventure science to be filled with only people who look like me. So it’s important that we open up science and open up the outdoors to everyone.

The thing that continuously strikes me is that if you really try to include people, there are small things that all of us can do that can make a big difference. For example, I volunteered at Big Sky Ski Resort and when they put in a new chair lift system, it was really hard for people using sit skis to get on the lift. (There was a bar they couldn’t get the ski over). We asked the resort  to accommodate sit skis, and all it took was removing a small plastic piece on every third chair so that folks in sit skis could sit comfortably and safely. That opens up so much more terrain and so much more space for people.

Making outdoor spaces welcoming and accessible to everyone is deeply important to me and I think that we can all engage and make a difference.

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not sciencing?

I’m a runner. I trail run a lot. I’m actually training for a 50K right now.

I really like winter running. I love to ski. I read a lot of books.

That’s basically me: I do a lot of reading, I do a lot of running, I do a lot of skiing, I do a lot of science!

Crump Fellowship award ceremony

After receiving her Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship at the 2024 INSTAAR celebration luncheon, Katie Gannon is flanked by Sarah Crump's parents, Liz Anderson and John Crump, as well as Sarah's PhD advisor Giff Miller (far left) and Sarah's partner, Nodin de Saillan (top). 

Giff Miller speaking at the 2024 INSTAAR celebration luncheon.

Katie Gannon speaking at the 2024 INSTAAR celebration luncheon.

Learn about the Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship, which provides summer support for a graduate student researching Earth or environmental science in Arctic, Antarctic, or alpine regions.

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INSTAAR researcher Peyton Thomas has been awarded the Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship for Faculty Diversity from CU Boulder. She joins Sophie Chien in Environmental Design and Liannie Velázquez-Santana in Geological Sciences as recipients of this year’s fellowships.

A fish physiologist who studies the impacts of a changing climate on fish growth trajectories, Thomas is a postdoctoral scholar at INSTAAR and in the Environmental Studies program. She is studying the growth potential of Arctic fishes across Interior Alaska and Canadian Yukon Territories through bioenergetics modeling as part of the Arctic Rivers Project. This project is working to incorporate Indigenous Knowledge into research questions, model parameters, and model outputs to help understand how northern fish and communities may adapt to climate change.

Thomas is also a world-class competitive runner. Recent stories in Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine and share more about Thomas’ community activism, life, and work.

The Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship for Faculty Diversity is awarded to postdoctoral scholars whose research, teaching, and/or service contribute to diversity in higher education. The one-year fellowship provides fellows with protected time for scholarship or research in preparation for a tenure-track faculty position.

The Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship for Faculty Diversity is sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and administered by the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs.

Peyton Thomas (center) with advisor Cassandra Brooks (left) in Alaska.

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Katie Gannon

INSTAAR is pleased to announce that incoming PhD student Katie Gannon is this year’s recipient of the Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship.

Gannon will enter CU Boulder as a PhD student at INSTAAR and in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, working with advisor Bella Oleksy.

Gannon’s research explores murky questions around greenhouse gas emissions from seasonally ice-covered lakes. As the climate warms, ice cover is disappearing earlier in the year from lakes in cold regions. This shortened duration of ice has consequences for ecosystems that aren’t well understood, in particular the amounts of methane and carbon dioxide produced in lakes.

Gannon has devised a research program to test hypotheses about productivity, carbon cycling, and greenhouse gas emissions in seasonally ice-covered lakes. Using funds from the Crump Fellowship, she will visit and select sites, pilot sample collection and analytical methods, and build and deploy sensors in lakes in the Green Valley Lakes area of the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research area.

As well as a creative and dedicated researcher, Gannon is an activist for wider, more equitable access to mountain science and mountain experiences. She has guided backcountry trips for girls and gender minorities; been a wilderness instructor for K-12 students; and has helped students with various physical cognitive and physical abilities to learn to ski. This integrated focus on research and community was also a hallmark of Sarah Crump’s life and work.

See also:

• See more about Katie in a followup article: Q&A with Katie Gannon, Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship winner.
• Learn more about the Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship, including Sarah's extraordinary legacy.

An INSTAAR student works in the Green Lakes Valley, where Katie Gannon will conduct her research. Photo by Dillon Ragar.

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We are proud to announce Sara Padula as the first recipient of the Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship. The fellowship provides summer support for a graduate student researching Earth or environmental science in Arctic, Antarctic, or alpine regions.

Padula is a first-year PhD student in EBIO, studying Rocky Mountain birds with Scott Taylor’s research group.

We caught up with Sara to ask about her research, her summer, and life as a scientist.

Q: What will you be working on this summer?

A: I am currently working on three projects. I’m a part of the Boulder Chickadee Study, which is what our lab is known for. The study involves the black-capped chickadee and mountain chickadee. We have about 400 nest boxes from Boulder at 5,000 feet up through the Mountain Research Station at 11,500 feet. We regularly monitor these nest boxes to get consistent data on chickadees: what nest stages look like, the timing of hatching, and genetic data.

Everybody interacts with birds, and chickadees are a really common backyard bird. So working on them is a great way to connect with our community.

Our overarching question is assessing the extent of hybridization between the two species. Previous members of my lab found that these two birds will mate with each other and produce offspring. Hybridization between black-capped chickadees and mountain chickadees in the Rocky Mountains is the result of human-mediated change. Us disturbing their environment has caused their habitats to overlap. My lab has found that most birds we sampled have genetic inheritance from both species, and that can have some consequences for the outcomes of nests. Can hybridization also help them adapt?

I also got a $10,000 grant to look at how anthropogenic noise impacts bird songs. Studies have found that in high-noise areas birds will initiate their dawn chorus earlier in the day or sing at higher pitches to avoid masking from anthropogenic noise. I’m working with Boulder OSMP to look at bird songs in high- and low-noise areas.

And lastly there is my dissertation work. This is a winter project that I’ll be starting on in the late summer.

Mountain chickadees and black-capped chickadees cache food. They’ll hide their food throughout their environment when resources are plentiful and, in the winter, the birds will retrieve thousands of food these caches in a single season. To recover all those caches, they need a really good spatial memory.

I mean, they can remember the location of thousands of food caches, and I have trouble remembering where my keys are in the morning

Studies have found that the section of the brain that plays a major role in learning and memory, the hippocampus, becomes enlarged in chickadees in the winter, which is when they utilize their memories the most. And, the more harsh the chickadee’s habitat, the better the spatial memory—and the trait is inheritable.

We use automated feeders to perform memory tests on chickadees in the wild. I will put special tags on the birds’ legs that interact with an antenna on the feeders. When a bird lands on the feeder, the antenna detects the tag and, in turn, opens the feeder door allowing the bird to get a seed. I can program the feeders to only open for specific birds. For our memory tests, I will assign each chickadee to a specific feeder and measure the amount of mistakes (going to the wrong feeder) they make in each trial, which serves as a measure of their spatial memory. Previous work has shown the chickadees quickly learn to visit their assigned feeders with few to no errors.

What I want to do is to compare spatial memories between the two species of chickadees, and also correlate that with their genetics.

I find the memories of chickadees fascinating. I mean, they can remember the location of thousands of food caches, and I have trouble remembering where my keys are in the morning. Can they respond to changing conditions and extreme weather using their spatial memory?

Sara Padula and colleagues capture chickadees for measurement, banding, and release.

Q: What did the Crump Fellowship allow you to do that you couldn’t otherwise?

A: I’m able to go to two conferences this summer, which is really nice. And it gives me more freedom in what I ask for from [her advisor] Scott [Taylor], since he isn’t having to find salary.

The Fellowship has been amazing. I got connected with her [Sarah Crump’s] whole family. Her dad includes me in an email chain, and we talk. He participates in kestrel monitoring, so he sends me pictures of his nestlings, and I send him pictures of my nestlings.

Sara presented her science poster at the Evolution 2023 conference in June 2023.  Her poster proposes how to investigate spatial cognition in black-capped chickadees and mountain chickadees.

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not sciencing?

A: I love reading. I only got back into reading when the pandemic happened. This year my goal is to read 40 books, and I’m on track for that. Me and my roommates have our own book club, just the three of us.

I’m on an intramural soccer team. And I’ve always loved running. I’m training for a half marathon in October in Moab.

I also love cooking and baking. I’m the designated chef and baker in my house. I’m vegetarian, and my girlfriend is vegan, so I do a lot of vegan and vegetarian stuff. I think vegan baking tastes better. It’s easier a lot of the time, too.

Learn about the Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship, which provides summer support for a graduate student researching Earth or environmental science in Arctic, Antarctic, or alpine regions.

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Jared Collins and Airy Peralta are presented with their Graduate Community Awards by Brad Markle at the celebration of INSTAAR awards. Photo by Marisa Seitz.

Airy Peralta and Jared Collins are the recipients of the first INSTAAR Graduate Community Awards. The award is a new honor that recognizes students who expend substantial effort in activities that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the INSTAAR community and as representatives of INSTAAR. Nominations can come from any member of the INSTAAR community and are evaluated by the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Task Force.

Airy Peralta is a PhD student (EBIO) studying the ecology of threatened and endangered species, particularly pikas, with Dr. Chris Ray. She is a leader in activities that bring science to underserved communities and elevate our collective ability to address ecological problems through science for all. She frequently engages with college and K-12 students who speak Spanish as their first language, serving as a STEM ambassador and mentor.

A few highlights of her activities include mentoring students in both the Research Experience for Community College Students (RECCS) program and the University Research Opportunities Program (UROP), applying her own experiences as a former student at Front Range Community College. She helped her mentees develop research skills, including programming for data analysis and grant writing.

She helped train a cohort of 150 community scientists collecting data on American pika habitat occupancy throughout the Front Range, which helps us understand local climate change and its impacts, in collaboration with the Denver Zoo and Rocky Mountain Wild.

Peralta spoke in both English and Spanish to nearly 100 Casey Middle School students who were either recent immigrants to the United States or English language learners about her path to becoming a scientist and the importance of science for conservation. She spoke to an equal number of third and fourth grade students at the STEM Launch event in Thornton on endangered species. As part of her Niwot Ridge Long Term Ecological Research requirements, she developed a game to engage elementary school students in predicting species ranges.

In addition, she wrote several successful grant proposals totaling more than $20,000 to support transitioning the landscaping around her housing development in Lafayette away from a typical lawn and toward a community of native plants, using her education at CU to increase community awareness of ecological issues and reducing her neighborhood’s reliance on water and pesticides.

Jared Collins is an MS student (EVEN) whose research with Dr. Diane McKnight focuses on harmful algal bloom detection in urban reservoirs. He is committed to bringing science to underserved groups and to the communities where research is based.

As part of his research, Collins has collected samples from Wonderland Lake in north Boulder each month using a drone. He has engaged thoughtfully with community members, passers-by, K-12 students, and many other members of the public who are curious about and interested in the status of their lake. He has also coordinated his work with the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks resource managers, giving information about the types of algae in the lake and whether or not they may contain cyanotoxins within 24 hours of sampling.

Collins also led a project to repurpose 1400 misprinted copies of Counting Caribou, a children’s book that presents an Alaska native narrative about caribou migration. Jared worked with three undergraduate students to correct and localize the books for Colorado by adding cards on wolf dispersal and mule deer migration. He has worked with faculty and staff in Engineering and the CU Office for Outreach and Engagement to distribute the books to underserved schools in southwestern Colorado. In addition, he has worked with others within INSTAAR and its partners to find outlets for the books, such as Native American communities in Colorado, attendees of public talks about pika given by Chris Ray, and teachers in Denver schools.

The awards were given to Peralta and Collins at a gathering on Wednesday, where INSTAARs celebrated their contributions. Dr. Bradley Markle, who led the selection process and presented the awards, said, “I’m extremely impressed by how much both these students have contributed to the INSTAAR as well as the broader scientific and local communities. They make our institute a better place to be!”

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