In a world with climate deniers, scientists have been trying to uncover the most effective way to present the scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change to audiences. “Climate stories” are personal accounts that have been used in recent years to engage more people in the global issue of climate change from an emotional perspective. There are multiple ways in which “climate stories” are presented. The present study explored the effects of audio, written, narrative, and informational climate change passages on the environmental decision-making levels of individuals. The current study hypothesizes that participants who receive the audio narrative will have the greatest environmental decision-making levels. Participants first completed the Climate Change Perceptions Scale (van Valkengoed, 2021) to obtain participants’ baseline views on climate change. Next, participants were randomly split into one of four groups, each presented with a different climate change passage: written narrative, audio narrative, written information, and audio information. After viewing the climate change passages, participants answered 5 scenario-based questions based on research reports to assess their environmental decision-making levels. The results of this study indicated that factual information is significantly more effective at influencing peoples’ environmental decision-making levels than climate stories, and the formatting of climate stories (audio or written) has no significant impact on environmental decision-making. These findings suggest that scientists should use an informational approach when sharing climate change evidence with others.

Last summer, Washington experienced a record-breaking heatwave. The three-day stretch of scorching heat not only had a catastrophic effect on the state’s residents, but also its crops, thus impacting the food supply. I recorded 116 degrees at my house on June 28th, 2021. I saw news reports of entire fields of potatoes and cherries being destroyed, and fruits that stopped growing from the unusually high temperatures. With so much devastation to farmers, I began wondering how farmers are going to cope with the inevitability of future heat waves. To study this issue in more detail, I sought out datasets that would help me analyze the impact of extreme heat on crops … After visiting an apple orchard in Grandview located in Eastern Washington, I learned about different sensor measurements, such as sap flow, soil moisture, and leaf temperature. I talked to several farmers who told me their struggles in managing irrigation during the unbearable heat in the summer months. One farmer told me he had no scientific way of knowing when to irrigate. I realized farmers needed an effective way of collecting and synthesizing data from various sensors. I began working with researchers at Washington State University (WSU) and an innovative startup called innov8.ag to collect data from IoT (Internet of Things) sensors as well as drone and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) imagery from the Honeycrisp apple orchard.

I was always a nature person and felt connected with the outdoors. There was something therapeutic about being alone by the water- just a wandering mind and the constant breaking of the waves along the shoreline. To me, the raw beauty of the environment is worth preserving because the small moments where we get the chance to truly appreciate nature are the most memorable ones. In a time where economic gains are prioritized above the state of the environment, it is disheartening to see that the environment that took billions of years to form is being dismantled in a span of decades … As I learned more about the major issues surrounding oceanic life and climate change, I became drawn to corals, who played pivotal roles in the balance of marine ecosystems while maintaining their intrinsic beauty. It was this perfect harmony of symbiosis that has remained unchanged for thousands of years- until now. Increased carbon emissions across the world have led to increased oceanic temperatures. Because corals thrive at an optimal temperature, they are unable to survive when oceanic temperatures rise. As a result, we are seeing massive bleaching events across the world’s oceans. In recent years, bleaching events have become more severe, and corals are running out of time. With coral vitality at risk, I knew that part of the solution to improving coral health was the microbiome, whose wide consortium of bacteria may play a part in increasing resistance to heat stress …

Currently, two-thirds of the global population experiences water scarcity. One-fifth of the world population currently lives in conditions of physical water scarcity, where there is not enough water to meet their demands, and one-quarter of the world’s population experiences economic water scarcity, where their region has enough water to meet the necessary personal, agricultural, environmental, and industrial needs, but lack sustainable accessibility. Existing literature determined that water scarcity occurred more often in areas where irrigation systems had low water productivity (WP) and water use efficiency (WUE), primarily caused by a lack of sufficient irrigation scheduling technology. To fully address the issue, aiding water scarcity in many regions requires proper technological innovation to manage available resources rather than drawing from new ones … Many students think that every research project needs to be some Nobel Prize level worth endeavor, but everyone must start somewhere. When conducting research, no matter the topic or complexity, every experience is something to learn from. As my school research teacher used to remind us, when starting out, it is important to remember that every master was once a beginner. The best way to start is to explore. My advice to any beginning researcher would be to stay curious, develop your knowledge base, pursue your passions, and don’t be afraid about the result. There is no way to guarantee a finding, but by trying, no matter what ends up happening, you end up learning something, and that my friends, is the best feeling in the world …

Over the past fifty years, land temperatures have increased at a decadal rate almost twice that compared to the past 100 years. Warming Earth’s atmosphere creates a rise in ocean heat content, and alters wind patterns and storm systems that impact surface layer mixing and ocean stratification, affecting nutrient availability. Changes in ocean temperatures and nutrient conditions are expected to impact many organisms including phytoplankton, the ocean’s major producer. To evaluate how climate change threatens marine ecosystems, this project studied the impact of rising sea surface temperature and altered nutrient availability on the phytoplankton Thalassiosira.

Living in the intermountain west, I believe that there isn’t a more important resource to both humans and wildlife as water. Along with my early childhood interest in science, I have always been concerned about the availability of water, remembering times when our well water was low, barely yielding enough water for bathing due to the diversion of surface water for agriculture, as well as worsening drought conditions. I was also worried about the overuse of water by humans for seemingly trivial reasons, with little regard to wildlife or habitat needs. After I learned about the BLM trying reverse decades of dewatering by reestablishing wetlands in the high mountain valley where I live, I became intensely interested in how both humans and wildlife would benefit from this unique management effort … My study examines how temporary wetlands, called playas, can be beneficial to wildlife by serving as a rich food source for migratory birds, as well as a source of groundwater recharge for humans needs. Wetlands, particularly those in the West, have been in sharp decline for many years due to human demands, and are becoming less functional and more disconnected as wildlife habitat. By understanding how wetland habitats and groundwater are interdependent and linked, water application strategies can be developed that can support wildlife as well as the farming needs of humans … Math as it is taught in the classroom has not captured my intense interest as has science throughout my years in high school. However, while conducting my research on this project, I realized that math is what allowed me to visualize and deduce my conclusions: it is the tool that validates and describes the differences and findings of any scientific endeavor … I gained a tremendous amount of confidence when I realized that I had the ability to understand and use math as I conducted science, giving it a much deeper meaning than just textbook examples …

For a moment, just think about it. Think about waking up in the middle of the night, thirsty, and not being able to access water because it is rationed so that the rest of your community can share the resource. Imagine using the restroom and having no water in the toilet because water is only cleaning out the latrine once a day. Although such scenarios seem quite extreme and impossible to many living in first world countries, this can become a reality at the rate at which water is being consumed and the inefficient manner it is being distributed … The water source on Earth is rapidly diminishing, and this is not new knowledge nor of new concern. Boating has been concluded to be a significant source of pollution; this focus has been centered around shoreline erosion, turbidity issues caused by uprising nutrient sediments, and chemical pollutants. Physical turbulence is not yet known to solely influence ecosystems, so this research centers on the re-suspension of water. Salt and freshwater ecosystems were created using a glass aquarium, plate glass, silicon seal, PVC pipes, and air and water pumps. Determining the severity and specific impacts of boating on photosynthesis and respiration gives clear and comprehensive views of water quality that is dependent on aquatic life.

To predict the response of estuarine ecosystems to anthropogenic and natural changes, process-based physical computer models serve as an important tool for simulation of estuarine salinity. Among the school of data-driven parametric models as alternative tools for process-based physical models to simulate environmental variables, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have become an increasingly popular modeling technique over the past two decades (Maren et al., 1990; Schalkoff, 1997; Dawson and Wilby, 2001; Maier and Dandy, 2001; Dawson et al., 2005; Pao, 2008). ANNs is a programming logic model using multivariable calculus and an algorithmic learning process to simulate various functions related with information processing, including pattern recognition, forecasting, and data compression. The logic of ANNs aims to imitate the workings of individual neurons in the human brain, making it able to dynamically model non-linear functions with very high accuracy. In this way, a modeler using ANNs has no need to explore the intermediate processes that occur in the relationship between an input variable and the final output. Instead, the ANN implicitly takes them into account during its learning process. Transport of salt in estuaries is influenced by multiple factors such as freshwater inflows and tide, and their relationship with salinity is highly complex and non-linear, making it ideal cases for the application of ANNs. The objective of this study is to develop ANNs to predict estuarine salinity using the Loxahatchee River as a case study. The Loxahatchee River is selected because of concerns about saltwater intrusion into the river (SFWMD, 2002; 2006; Kaplan et al., 2010; Liu et al., 2011). The hypothesis is that salinity in the Loxahatchee River can be effectively simulated with ANNs, through properly training and testing, using freshwater inflow, rainfall, and tide as inputs.

My parents, both Chinese citizens at the time, came to the United States in the late 80’s to attend graduate school. Later on, my mom got a job offer and they moved to the town I was born and raised in, a small town in North Dakota by the name of Grand Forks. We have been here since then. The Red River of the North runs through Grand Forks, and one summer, I was deemed old enough to ride my bike down to the river so that I could explore. It was then that I found the tubes. Big cement tubes. And there was something coming out of them. And whatever that something was, it was draining into my river. When I asked, I was told that those tubes were pipes that drained runoff water from the city to the river. That answered some of my questions, but not all. And later that winter when I found out about Science Fair, I knew what my project was going to be. That was the year of 2005. For the next four years, I studied river water quality and the river surroundings. A local research center supported my studies by providing the sampling devices and lab facilities that I needed for my project. My first two water quality science projects focused on the long term behavior of common water quality parameters such as pH, turbidity, and the levels of dissolved oxygen and ions. The latter two projects that I conducted focused more on the interaction between the city and the river in terms of how we may be polluting our water sources in ways we don’t realize…

The Southern Pine Beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis), is the genus of bark beetles causing the greatest amount of damage to pine trees. Southern Pine Beetles (SPB) live in the phloem, the layer just under the bark. The beetles tunnel their way through the pine tree’s phloem as they eat, cutting off the circulation of nutrients, and ultimately killing the pine. As the average temperature of the globe increases, minimum winter temperatures are no longer reaching the lower lethal point in many areas. This warming trend has permitted SPBs to migrate north to areas such as the forests in southern New Jersey where they are destroying large stands (groups) of pine trees

I am Alice in Wonderland. It’s an inane statement, but it’s true. I’ve cracked the shell of reality, landing somewhere foreign and unknown. I’ve always attempted to chase small animals and to get lost in the simple web of suburban sidewalk. I’m infectiously curious; I’m constantly determined to explore. I can remember quite clearly the first time I broke the surface. I was in the mountains of upstate New York and still retained the neutral eyes of a child. One morning I took my basket to pick blackberries along the edges of a nearby forest, and I saw a buck standing beneath an apple tree. The breath left my lungs and in an instant I was after him, my basket thrown haphazardly onto the soil. He was a flurry of tawny whiteness, a larger-than-life sprite I was destined to catch. He wound through the foliage, bounding like the shadow of a falling leaf. I was nearly at my threshold, panting, fingers yearning to reach when…

I sat as still as the humid air around me, on soft yellow sand lightly punctuated by pebbles and twigs. With my eyes, I followed an advancing motion that was shaking the lowest branch of one of the bushes that surrounded my little island of sand. Slowly and deliberately the motion progressed forward until, upon reaching the threshold where the protection of the leaves ended, it stopped. A minute or so later, an elaborately patterned green head emerged from the leaves and two intense black eyes focused on my surroundings and me. I thought I could not remain still any longer, but from the shadow surrounding the pair of dark eyes, a diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) finally took shape and proceeded to gradually make her way over the sand and pebbles, occasionally stopping to prod into the sand with her nose, dig a small hole, and move on to another spot, where she repeated her pre-nesting procedure. What was she looking for? After four test holes, this mother-to-be chose a spot to her liking in a sandy plot near a small bush and committed her clutch of eggs to the sand and microhabitat. Here they would incubate from seventy to one-hundred days. Yet why did she make her nest in this particular spot, near this particular bush?