For the 2011 competition, 20 applicants presented their ongoing or recently completed research at the Reid Bryson Poster Session, as part of the annual Nelson Institute Earth Day Conference on April 20, 2011. The applicants were from a wide range of departments and centers across the University of Wisconsin-Madison, including the Center for Climatic Research (CCR), the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE), the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC), the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, the Nelson Institute Environment and Resources program, the Department of Ecology, the Department of Geology, and the Department of Engineering. This rich diversity in research fields captures the interdisciplinary nature of Professor Reid Bryson’s studies.
Posters were judged based on the following criteria: Artistic presentation, originality of the scientific question, clarity, soundness of methodology, importance of the research, and topical relevance. The judges in the 2011 competition were Drs. Michael Notaro, Jessica Blois, and Bjorn Brooks.
The winner of the 2011 Reid Bryson Scholarship of $1500 was Rachel Licker from SAGE. Rachel is a PhD student under advisor Professor Chris Kucharik. The title of her poster was “Integrating climatic and social factors in assessing regional crop yield gaps: A case study comparing the breadbaskets of France and Russia.” Her project aims to understand the source of the difference between potential and actual crop yields in two diverse regions of the world.
To illustrate the diversity in research topics of the applicants, some of the topics of the submitted posters are included below.
- Impact of land cover change in precipitation in the global breadbaskets
- Climate change impacts on bird upslope movement in Monteverde
- Comparison of Midwest emissions from freight rail and trucks
- Enhancing flight training through advanced weather simulation
- Understanding regional crop yield gaps in France and Russia
- Ocean upwelling and deglaciation
- Ecological impacts of carbon acidification in the Great Lakes
- Validation of simulated water vapor with observations from GPS receivers
- Influence of global warming on the hydrological cycle
- Carbon dioxide ecosystem exchange in mountainous terrain
- Short-term prediction of precipitation at the AOSS building
- Understanding temperature trends at Central Park
- Surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet
- Decadal climate prediction using dynamic analogue method
- Food waste composting for landfill diversion