Center for the Environment

The Center for the Environment was involved with the following recent projects and events:

• Aaron Johnson, Senior Laboratory Technician, was the speaker at the Baker River Watershed Association’s annual meeting on April 29, 2010. He presented and overview of the Center’s Environmental Research Laboratory.
• Mark Green, hydrologist for CFE and the US Forest Service Northern Research Station, recently had a paper published in Biogeochemistry titled “Patterns of hydrologic control over stream water total nitrogen to total phosphorus ratios”. Mark also gave an invited talk on “Hydrologic Change during the Colonial Era of the United States: Beavers and the Energy Cost of Impoundments” and presented a poster on “Exploring the History of Time in an Integrated System: the Ramifications for Water” at this winter’s American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco titled. 
• Madeline McElaney, CFE graduate student, wrote the energy efficiency and community sustainability chapter for the Town of Plymouth master plan.  This project serves as her capstone project for a Masters Degree in Environmental Science and Policy. She presented her work to the Plymouth Land Use committee on Aril 15^th and followed with a presentation at CFE Science Colloquium on April 21^st titled “Planning for Energy Efficiency and Community Sustainability”.
• CFE’s director, Patrick Bourgeron, presented a talk about ecosystem services to the Hubbard Brook Committee of Scientists meeting on April 14, 2010 at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY. Mark Green also attended the meeting. Further collaboration with Hubbard Brook will be developed on the topic.

During the late winter and early spring of 2010, the Center for the Environment, with assistance from th Israel’s River Volunteer Advisory Group ,tested the Israel’s River  in Jefferson and Lancaster, NH for chloride. While chloride occurs naturally in our water sources, the N.H. Department of Environmental Services reports that testing over the last 25 years has indicated that chloride levels have increased steadily and substantially in some of New Hampshire’s freshwater streams, rivers, lakes, ponds, wetlands, and groundwater. It is believed that road salt is the source of this increase level of chloride.

On May 18, 2010, Mark Green and Aaron Johnson from the Center for the Environment present the results of the recent testing of the Israel’s River at a meeting of the Jefferson Conservation Commission. Samples were taken from the river at various times and a sensor was also put into the river in Lancaster. The sensor provided data every 15 minutes and could be compared to the less frequent physical samples that were analyzed at the Center’s Environmental Research Laboratory.

The results indicate that the Israel’s River has low levels of chloride, but Center hopes to continue testing the river in the future to better understand the dynamics of chloride.

• Coos Democrat May 26 2010

Graduate students Marguerite Crowell, Nick Stevenson, and Christian Weber co-presented a talk with the Town of Canaan at the NH Department of Environmental Services’ Annual Drinking Water Source Protection Workshop on April 30^th. The talk, “Protecting Drinking Water in Canaan Street Lake Watershed”, summarized the results from their Land Use Planning Seminar. In this applied course, taught by Outreach and Development Coordinator June Hammond Rowan, the students developed recommendations for improving the town’s land use regulations related to protecting the quality of the town’s drinking water supply. Nick also presented a plenary talk with Associate Director Brian Eisenhauer on “How Can Community-Based Social Marketing Be Used to Protect Local Water Resources?”