News

Our team from UST received an honorable mention in the 2015 EPA P3 competition, putting us in the company of teams from Stanford, Johns Hopkins, UC Davis, and Arizona State. UST was the only liberal arts undergraduate program represented among the finalists. Our project explored the potential to use hydroponic gardens to remove excess phosphorus from urban lakes.
You can read our final report here.

Recent student presentations

Louis Sand presenting his research to State Senator Kent Eken in the State Capitol Rotunda.

Urban Ecosystem Ecology students presenting our neighborhood-scale composting research at the St. Paul mayor's office.

Rachel Sweet presenting our class research on neighborhood scale composting at the 2013 Ecological Society of America meeting.

High school research students Cassidy Yueh and Alex Guzman spent this summer researching the feasibility of recovering energy from fish waste through anaerobic digestion to fuel aquaponics systems.

Brendan Sisombath presenting his compost research at the 2015 Ecological Society of America meeting.

Isaac Bergstrom presents our class research project on the efficiency of converting nutrients from coffee grounds to basil (via worms, and tilapia) at the 2013 Ecological Society of America meeting.

Short films by UST videography student Austin Riordan

Tracking Urban Nutrients in the St. Louis River Estuary (18:22)

Closing Open Systems (2:09)

Undergraduate researchers Natacha Eguida, Jessica Brown, and Lauren Reuss visit the R/V Blue Heron in 2014 during a break from fieldwork on the St. Louis River Estuary.

Loading the Blue Heron in preparation for our March 2011 cruise. The lake was still covered by ice. Read more at http://www.giving.umn.edu/extras/blueheron/index.html

Media coverage

Career Columns in Nature (2012)

Time to Tweet
Postdoc's Dilemma

Sustainability Columns in Roseville Patch

In 2012 I wrote a series of columns exploring where our resources come from, where our waste goes, and what it means to live sustainably in an urban environment.

Sustainable living (5/13/12)
Plague of the dandelions (5/14/12)
Carbon footprint (5/22/12)
Energy conservation (6/16/12)
Keeping cool (7/29/12)
Where does our water come from? (8/9/12)

Great Lakes Research Cruise: July 14-31, 2011 on R/V Blue Heron

The goal of this 18-day cruise was to measure microbial transformations of nitrogen in three of the Great Lakes. Our cruise path took us along a biogeochemical gradient, from the deep, cold, low-phosphorus, highly oxygenated waters of Lake Superior to the shallow, warm, high-phosphorus, low-oxygen waters of Lake Erie. Measurements included water and chemistry, potential denitrification, sediment C, N, and O flux from core incubations, nitrification rates, and abundance of nitrifiers.

Carbon Transport and Processing in Tropical Rivers

Special Session at ASLO aquatic science meeting, February 2011 abstracts

Workshop at La Selva Biological Station, April 2010, funded by NSF Research Coordination Network Grant

featured in OTS Bulletin:

E-Canopy Newsletter, June 2010

The workshop was also featured on the Odum School of Ecology website. link

Twenty-two scientists participated in the April 2010 workshop, representing research sites from Central and South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia.