Featured Blog

Canada’s Climate Change Adaptation Platform. Photo: Natural Resources Canada

The Power of Policy: A Canadian perspective  
Jul 16, 2018 • Monica Harvey

I started my career in a technical field completing a Bachelor of Science in Honours Chemistry with a focus on environmental chemistry and a final year thesis in atmospheric chemistry. After working at an environmental consulting company, I returned to school to obtain a Master of Applied Science in... more

Recent Posts

The Power of Policy: A Canadian perspective  
Jul 16, 2018 • Monica Harvey

Canada’s Climate Change Adaptation Platform. Photo: Natural Resources Canada

I started my career in a technical field completing a Bachelor of Science in Honours Chemistry with a focus on environmental chemistry and a final year thesis in atmospheric chemistry. After working at an environmental consulting company, I returned to school to obtain a Master of Applied Science in Environmental Engineering. It wasn’t until designing my Master’s thesis project that I started... more

Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center Fellows Retreat  
Jun 18, 2018 • Jamie Mosel

Photo: Jeanne Brown

As a first year PhD student, being a part of the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center is a spectacular learning opportunity. Each month, I’m able to participate in meetings and seminars, to learn about the work of other researchers and students, and to improve my own research and engagement. Being a student at the University of Minnesota and part of the NE CASC, I feel particularly... more

Visualizing uncertainty  
Jun 4, 2018 • Elsita Kiekebusch

Photo: Elsita Kiekebusch

“Science is so, so visual!” – Neil McCoy

Many of us in the early-career phase have trained long and hard in the skills necessary to “do science”.  We’ve practiced experimental design, statistical analysis, and manuscript writing. But we haven’t been formally trained to communicate our science outside of our field to policy-makers, stakeholders or the public. Historically, graduate-level... more

Playing tug-of-war  
Apr 16, 2018 • Adrienne Wootten

Do you recall playing a little game called tug-of-war as a child (or even as an adult)? If you were playing with one other person, you’d stand on one side, they’d stand on the other, with a rope held between you. You and your friend (or foe) would start tugging the rope and whomever pulled the other person over a line in the center would be declared the winner. Sometimes it’s muddy and... more

Finding mentors and making it work long-distance: Perspectives from an NSF GRIP Intern  
Mar 27, 2018 • Deidre Jaeger

Deidre monitoring a green ash tree and downloading accelerometer sensor data in a residential yard in Boulder, CO, November, 2017.

Today my colleague asked me, “are you going to test these sensors on a tree up in the mountains so you can go somewhere out-of-town?” My response was, “Nope, I’m putting them on trees at campus and at my house.” This colleague, an engineer who works in the basement of our building, looked at me like I was missing a grand opportunity. I had to explain more about why I’m psyched to... more

Balancing Grad School and a Career  
Mar 12, 2018 • Aparna Bamzai-Dodson and Lindsey Middleton

Photo: Brian Miller

Many early-career scientists balance a multitude of roles when attending graduate school, from the heavy demands of coursework and research to teaching and thesis and dissertation writing, not to mention the added responsibilities of a job or career. To offer two perspectives among many in the early career climate science field, Aparna Bamzai and Lindsey Middleton, both full-time employees of... more

How to achieve work-life balance: Stories of success from CSC Science Moms  
Feb 26, 2018 • DR. TONI LYN MORELLI, DR. ABBY LYNCH, DR. NICOLE DECRAPPEO AND DR. MICHELLE STAUDINGER

As we gear up for Women’s History Month, the Early Career Climate Forum and the Fisheries Blog are joining forces to highlight and build upon the personal stories of female researchers in our scientific networks by showcasing perspectives... more

Reflecting on the 23rd Conference of Parties  
Feb 5, 2018 • Emma Kuster

The unofficial U.S. presence at COP23 was certainly not small! They had their own space and named it the U.S. Climate Action Center. Photo: Emma Kuster

If you had told me in January of 2017 that I’d be traveling to Bonn, Germany later in the year to witness world discussions on climate action, I would not have believed you. You see, at that time, I had yet to travel outside of the United States because I was terrified of flying over the big, blue ocean! Oh I had dreams to travel abroad, but I’d never acted upon them because of my fear.

... more

Now Hiring! Where to Look for Summer Funding  
Jan 22, 2018 • Clay Tucker and Taylor Rowley

Graduate funding often matches the 9-month term that most professors hold, so not every graduate student has access to year-round funding. Perhaps you pick up a job at the local coffee shop, or maybe you move back home for three months, or maybe you have somehow saved enough money to have a white-knuckle penniless ride through JJA (that’s June, July, and August in climate-speak). However, did... more

What do fish and flowers have in common?  
Dec 18, 2017 • Rebecca Dalton

A) A photo of my field site in Gothic, CO, where flowers begin blooming early each spring. B) Fish ladder in Parker River, MA where fish are counted each spring. C) A photo of Claytonia lanceoloata (spring beauty), which is one of my study species for my dissertation. D) A photo of Alosa pseudoharengus (alewife), which is the fish species I have been studying at the NE CSC as part of my NSF GRIP program. Photo credit: 1A and 1C by Rebecca Dalton, 1B and 1D by Matthew Devine.

I have answered this question more times than I can count since September. My colleagues, friends, and family members have been curious as to why someone who studies plants, can suddenly switch to studying fish for a semester.

Since starting graduate school, I have been studying how climate change affects the time when plants begin flowering, and how the timing of flowering affects... more