Spring 2012 Volume 3 | Issue 1

New Mexico EPSCoR

First Cyberlearning Summit a Success!
A group of EPSCoR collaborators from New Mexico, Nevada, and Idaho joined together in Jemez Springs to discuss cyberlearning activities, programs, and materials that have been developed with support from the NSF EPSCoR Track 2 award.
One component of the Western Tri-State Consortium (Track 2) of NV, NM and ID is the utilization of cyberinfrastructure to integrate research with education. Consequently, each of the states has developed cyberlearning (CL) tools related to the theme of water resources and climate change. In January 2012, 26 participants from all three states convened in New Mexico to explore synergies that exist amongst the projects. During the two-day CL Summit, representatives of each state led demonstrations of the K-12 CL materials/programs that had been developed or expanded with NSF EPSCoR funding, including the McCall Outdoor Science School (MOSS) in Idaho, Growing up Thinking Scientifically (GUTS) in New Mexico, and implementation of Climate Change Cyberlearning Curriculum Development (C4D) in Nevada. In addition to learning about the programs, a goal of the summit was to identify components of the projects that were suitable for scaling up and dissemination to the other states.

THE EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAM TO STIMULATE COMPETITIVE RESEARCH QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER

The participants of the Cyberlearning Summit pause for a group picture before heading down to the Jemez river to collect water samples for data analysis.

During the summit, it became clear that the programs developed individually were synergistic and would likely provide even more effective learning opportunities for students by incorporating components across projects. As a result, CL leaders from each state contributed to a proposal to NSFs Cyberlearning: Transforming Education program that would support development of a research program to consider how the various approaches used by each program and their respective strengths could best be integrated and leveraged. The summit also resulted in several cyberlearning sessions that will be offered at the upcoming Tri-State meeting in Sun Valley, Idaho.

The day was full of fun activities, including this one led by staff members of ProjectGUTS.

Participants separated into teams to perform handson experiments with water quality instruments.

IN THIS ISSUE:
New NSF Award Spotlight on... Poster Tips & Upcoming Events News & Announcements

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Enhancing research competitiveness is at the core of EPSCoR.

New Mexico EPSCoR currently invests in climate, hydrology, water quality, cyberinfrastructure and socioeconomic research efforts.

NSF award granted to epSCoR Researchers

The $261,540 grant is primarily a field extension of the karst hyporheic modeling, but part of the fieldwork for Dr. John Wilson & Katrina Koski will include testing some of the instrumentation developed under EPSCoR. Previous tracing field work in the Valles Caldera will also help to formulate an experimental design for tracing projects in the karst conduit.
Award Abstract #1141768 This project will attempt to measure, for the first time, hyporheic exchange at the margin of a karst conduit (cave below the water table). Hyporheic exchange in surface streams is a relatively new field, but related publications are growing exponentially as the implications for flow contaminant transport, residence time distributions, biogeochemistry and biology are realized. This project will investigate whether, as with streams, hyporheic exchange occurs in karst conduits, regardless of larger-scale net exchange with the aquifer. Karst-conduit hyporheic exchange, and related biogeochemical processing, then becomes a fundamental component of the karst water cycle. The project will be conducted in a phreatic conduit field site in the unconfined Floridan Aquifer; additionally there will be a nearby air-filled analog site that was exposed to similar processes at some time in the geologic past. Cores will be taken from the phreatic and analog sites. Porosity, permeability, and petrophysical measurements will be used a proxy indicators of past conduit hyporheic flow. The core holes at the phreatic site will be equipped with multilevel samplers and injectors, and a series of dye traces will be conducted to observe karst-conduit hyporheic flow. Modeling will be used throughout the project, first to help plan the field work and then to synthesize the data. Results from the data and models will give insights into the temporal and spatial scales of hyporheic flow. The project will end with modeling as a predictive tool to generalize our results. Read the full abstract at the NSF awards website. Special thanks to Katrina Koski for the information.

Divers will core into the matrix at the conduit-matrix boundary (a, b) and equip core holes with multilevel samplers (d). Secondary permeability development in the recovered cores (c) may give indication of past hyporheic flow. The multilevel samplers will be used to sample matrix water as part of tracer experiments. They may also be used to inject tracer into the matrix.

Have you seen... tHe new Mexico steM Database?

NM EPSCoR continues to maintain the New Mexico STEM Database, a searchable listing of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) programs, opportunities and events for students, teachers, and members of the community. Listings include resources at the K-12, undergraduate, and graduate level as well as information on public STEM events statewide. The STEM Database is meant to promote STEM 2

programs as well as provide access to other STEM opportunities. Take a look at the Database by visiting www.nmstemed.org. If you have any questions about the Database, please contact Natalie Willoughby, Public Info and Outreach Rep for NM EPSCoR.

Education and Outreach through EPSCoR

New Mexico EPSCoR supports education and outreach activities that contribute to New Mexico citizens understanding of climate science and CI

4th annual Faculty Leadership Workshop in Jemez Springs, NM

once again, the annual workshop for junior faculty at the valles caldera science & education center was a big hit.
The three-day workshop was packed with exercises and collaboration for the largest group of junior faculty in the workshops four year history. The program continues to be of great value for new and up-and-coming faculty members across various fields and backgrounds. The sequestered environment during a down time of the year with the perfect number of diverse colleagues was perfect. This workshop filled a need I didnt fully realized I had, observed one participant in a survey conducted after completing the workshop. I plan to lead a few lab meetings with my group so I can disseminate some of the knowledge and tools to my own group. Similar to previous years, this years agenda included Planning and Writing Effective Proposals, Increasing Your Productivity, Teaching that Produces Learning, Mentoring, Communicating Science to the Media, Leader as Facilitator, and Communicating with Decision Makers. Powerpoints and the full agenda are up on the EPSCoR website. If you are interested in the Faculty Leadership Workshop, please join the NM EPSCoR listserv to stay updated.

spotligHt on: caRlos ocHoa

Carlos Ochoa is a Research Assistant Professor and Post-doctoral Researcher at New Mexico State University. His research experience encompasses ten years working on hydrology and watershed management issues that affect the state of New Mexico. Currently, Carlos is working as part of an interdisciplinary and multi-institutional research team investigating environmental resilience of watersheds in the face of climate change and population growth in norther n New Mexico. Highlights of Carlos work include collaborating in the development and implementation of a research plan aimed to better understand 3 hydrologic connectivity between headwater sources and their associated downstream agriculture valleys. In addition, he is collaborating in the development of a system dynamics model that will integrate complex human and environmental relationships occurring in these watersheds. Prior to his current appointment, Carlos worked for eight years as a watershed management research specialist (also at NMSU) where the team sought to characterize different hydrologic processes and to quantify various water budget components in agriculture and woodland settings.

Human Infrastructure is one of the key components of EPSCoR

Activities in communication and public outreach help New Mexico EPSCoR foster excellence in climate change research and education

poster Tips
posters are an effective form of communication for research and scientific findings. but what makes a poster great? each nM epscoR newsletter will now feature tips and tricks to make your poster better.
Source: Zielinska, E., Poster Perfect. The Scientist Magazine, September 2011.

upcoming events 2012

April 3-5
4th Annual Tri-State Meeting Late registration available (click) Sun Valley, ID

TIPS FOR CLEARER CONTENT

A poster is an advertisement for your work, not a detailed account. Keep your titles short and to the point, i.e The first brain. Choose a title with a message. Avoid acronyms and jargon when catering to a diverse audience. Prospective collaborators in other fields will be drawn to titles they can understand. Make sure to answer your hypothesis. If possible, use 4-5 summary statements with bullets in the conclusion section to address the hypothesis.

TIPS FOR GOOD DESIGN

Shorten your text lines. Long lines of text are difficult to read. Use LEFT justification. Full justification leads to rivers within columns of text. Use simple fonts, and do not use more than 2 or 3 font families. Always choose a larger point size for your text - around 85pt for the title, and 24-34pt for the body text. Pick a new color palette, and ditch the colors provided in PowerPoint. Stay away from primary colors. Pick a muted background color and dark colors for the text.

April 18
NSF Workshop Science: Becoming the Messenger More information at nmepscor.org Albuquerque, NM

April 23-24
2011-2012 Supercomputing Challenge Expo and Awards Ceremony Los Alamos, NM

May 9-11
Rocky Mountain GSA Meeting Visit geosociety.org for registration Albuquerque, NM

June 1
New Mexico EPSCoR IWGs Due More information at nmepscor.org

June 5-6
Town Hall: New Mexico Fire & Water Albuquerque, NM

June 25-29
AWRA Summer Specialty Conference Visit awra.org for more information Denver, CO

July 1
Tri-State Consortium IWGs Due More information at nmepscor.org

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NM epSCoR announcements & News

sandia Mountain natural History center events & updates
The Sandia Mountain Natural History Center continues to create and deliver quality content and events about nature to audiences in New Mexico. The Ecology Field Program is in full swing for the spring semester, educating students of all ages about ecology, ecosystems, the environment, and conservation. With funding from NM EPSCoR, the SMNHC has served 7,290 students, teachers and parents from around the state. The SMNHC will also host BioBlitz 2012 on August 10th and 11th. Hikes are scheduled for the evening of Friday, August 10th and all day Saturday for this 24-hour survey of all living things. This year, the SMNHC is adding a tabling event for environmental and natural resource organizations, as well as a family activity area. For more information on BioBlitz, contact Rosie at 505281-5259 or rosie.norlander@state.nm.us. The Sandia Mountain Natural History Center (SMNHC) is an award-winning environmental education center located on a beautiful 128-acre piece of pionjuniper forest in the Sandia Mountains just east of Albuquerque. For more information, visit their website: www.nmnaturalhistory. org/smnhc.

The beautiful grounds of the SMNHC in the Sandia Mts.

open call for nM epscoR & tri-state iwg proposals

Proposals are now being accepted for Innovation Working Groups (IWGs). IWGs support multi-day working group activities that are modeled after those held at the highly successful NSF-funded National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). And IWG supports 8-12 scientists or educators to work collaboratively on complex and challenging issues through integration and synthesis of data, information, and knowledge. At least one IWG each year will focus on education, communication and outreach, or diversity. The deadline for NM EPSCoR IWG Proposals is June 1, 2012. The deadline for Western Consortium Tri-State IWG Proposals is July 1, 2012. For proposal guidelines and information about previous IWGs, please visit the NM EPSCoR IWG webpage.

Participants of the June 2011 IWG Using Climate Data in the Classroom enjoyed their brainstorming sessions.

First annual water Festival Held in las cruces, nM

Almost 1000 third and fourth graders from 10 schools came to the Las Cruces Water Festival. Organized by Leeann DeMouche, the day was perfect with lovely weather as students entered Young Park greeted by the Water Wizard. Eager learners were greeted with a welcome packet that included a Water Festival Passport, which they filled out with answers and a stamp from each of the presenters. Every booth provided fun, hands-on activities about different types of water resources, all of which are tied to New Mexico standards and benchmarks. Teachers were excited their students were exposed to so many water conservation issues. NM EPSCoR helped provide funding for buses that brought students to the event. Source: City of Las Cruces Thanks to Caiti Steele for the tip!

Students have some fun while learning about water resources at the 1st Annual Las Cruces Water Festival.

Contribute to our Newsletter!

If you have an article, publication or story you would like to share with the EPSCoR Community, please email Natalie Willoughby, Public Information Representative, at nwilloughby@epscor.unm.edu. 5

University of New Mexico MSC04 2815 1312 Basehart Dr. SE Albuquerque, NM 87106

New Mexico epSCoR Contact Information

New Mexico EPSCoR State Office University of New Mexico MSC04 2815 1312 Basehart Dr. SE Albuquerque, NM 87106 phone: 505-814-7500 fax: 505-246-6007
Dr. William Michener Project Director (505) 814-7601 wmichener@lteRnet.edu Dr. Mary Jo Daniel Associate Director (505) 814-7010 mjdaniel@unm.edu Natalie Willoughby
If you would like a printed copy of this newsletter, please email Natalie Willoughby with your name, affiliation and mailing address, and we will be happy to send one your way.

www.nmepscor.org

Public Information & Outreach Rep

(505) 814-7500 x. 8111 nwilloughby@epscor.unm.edu

New Mexico epSCoR is funded by the National Science Foundation. Our mission: to provide the critical gap infrastructure, computational support, and education and outreach opportunities that foster excellence in climate change research and education. For more information, please visit www.nmepscor.org. This material is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Coop. Agreement EPS- 0814449. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.