News Archives

The Baltimore Ecosystem Study 22nd Annual Meeting was held remotely on Oct 28-29, 2020. Details are posted here.

1/24/2017 CUERE welcomes Debbie Wellens as our new Business Services Specialist.

12/31/2016 CUERE’s long-time accountant, Sabrina Strohmier, has retired.

11/12/2016 Under support from National Science Foundation’s CNH (Coupled Natural and Human Systems) program, CUERE researchers have published their final results in the Journal of American Water Resources Association on on coupling hydrological and urban growth models for the Baltimore metropolitan region.

10/17/16  John Lagrosa has been named CUERE’s new Environmental Data Manager. John holds a BA in Economics, a MS in Information Systems/Technology, and a PhD in Forest Resources and Conservation with a specialization in Urban Ecology. We are thrilled to have John join our dynamic team!

8/24/16 Andy Miller appeared on the Marc Steiner Show on August 23, 2016  to discuss the Baton Rouge flooding.

6/30/16 Stu Schwartz’s soil compaction work with MD State Highway Administration has been selected as one of AASHTO’s “Sweet 16” high value research projects for 2016.

5/30/16 Claire Welty is quoted in The Philadelphia Inquirer on her EPA/Swarthmore green infrastructure project.

3/4/16 The Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER Phase 4 renewal proposal for 2016-2022 was submitted to National Science Foundation by Dr. Emma Rosi-Marshall, PI.

2/26/16 Dr. Upal Ghosh, Professor of Environmental Engineering, has received the University System of Maryland Regents Award for Excellence in Research.

2/19/16 Aditi Bhaskar, UMBC PhD 2013 and former IGERT trainee, has accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado State University beginning August 2016. Dr. Bhaskar is currently a NSF post-doctoral fellow at US Geological Survey in Reston, VA.  Claire Welty was Aditi’s PhD advisor.

2/18/16 Rod Barnett, Chair, Master of Landscape Architecture Program at Washington University in St Louis, brought 6 MLA students to Baltimore for the week of February 14-20 to learn about the Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER research and how BES interacts with Baltimore stakeholders on sustainability issues. Dr. Steward Pickett, BES Project Director, met with the group and arranged field trips through the city. Claire Welty and GES/UMBC graduate students Dorothy Borowy, Mariya Shcheglovitova, and Adam Dixon joined in a discussion session with Mr. Barnett, Dr. Pickett and the MLA students at CUERE on February 18, 2016 from 9 AM-12 PM.

2/17/16 Eli Patmont, MS candidate in Environmental Engineering, successfully defended his MS thesis.  The title of his thesis is “Bioaccumulation monitoring and modeling of PCBs after the first full scale application of activated carbon to a 5-acre lake in Dover, DE”. Eli’s major advisor is Prof. Upal Ghosh.

2/12/16 UMBC Environmental Engineering students have won first prize in an AEESP-sponsored student video competition addressing the theme “Environmental Engineers Protect Public and Ecological Health”. View the winning video here.

2/9/16  Molly Van Appledorn, PhD candidate in Geography and Environmental Systems, defended her doctoral dissertation on Monday, February 8, 2016 at 12 noon in Sondheim 001. The title of her dissertation is “Floods and forests: community-structuring processes in bottomland ecosystems”. Molly’s major advisor is Prof. Matthew Baker.

1/24/16  The Baltimore Ecosystem Study quarterly science meeting on Green Infrastructure to be held on 1/26/16 has been postponed due to snow. The meeting will be held later this spring.

1/15/16  Rose Smith, PhD candidate in the Dept of Geology at U MD College Park, successfully defended her PhD dissertation entitled “Dissolved and Gaseous Fluxes of Carbon and Nitrogen from Urban Watersheds of the Chesapeake Bay”.  Rose’s major advisor is Prof. Sujay Kaushal.

8/21/15 Zhengtao Cui, PhD candidate in environmental engineering, successfully defended his PhD dissertation entitled “Development and application of a particle-tracking model for nitrogen transport and transformation in aquifers”.

8/1/15 UMBC is a key partner in a new $12M NSF Urban Sustainability research project. http://my.umbc.edu/groups/research/posts/53050

4/14/15 Anna Johnson has been awarded a NSF post-doctoral fellowship to identify and quantify deposited pollen from contemporary Hawaiian flowering plant communities.

4/1/15 The Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER (http://www.beslter.org) will hold its next quarterly meeting on June 11, 2015 in TRC 206 at UMBC.

3/13/15 Anna Johnson successfully defended her PhD dissertation in the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems. Dr. Johnson is the last of the UMBC IGERT trainees to complete the program.

2/20/15 Alimatou Seck successfully defended her PhD dissertation in the Department of Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering.

9/30/14 Garth Lindner successfully defended his PhD dissertation in the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems. Dr. Linder will join US Geological Survey in Missouri for a post-doctoral fellowship position.

8/15/14 UMBC is a collaborative partner in a NSF Coastal SEES award, “Restoration, redevelopment, revitalization, and nitrogen in a coastal watershed. Peter Groffman of the Cary Institute is the lead PI. C. Welty and AJ Miller are UMBC PI/co-PIs. USGS (Ed Doheny) is also a collaborative partner.

7/1/14 Prof Andrew J Miller of Geography and Environmental Systems has received a grant from Chesapeake Bay Trust entitled “Assessment of stream restoration impacts on urban sediment load and comparison with TMDL guidelines”. Claire Welty is co-PI and CUERE staff member John Kemper will be carrying out the bulk of the field work.

5/1/14 John Kemper, CUERE staff member, has been accepted into the UMBC graduate program in environmental engineering as a part-time MS student.

2/14/14 A You Tube video has been released showing results of Stu Schwartz’s suburban subsoiling project,  The video, narrated by Brennan Smith, can be viewed here.

12/16/13 Aditi Bhaskar has received a NSF Earth Sciences Post-doctoral fellowship to work with USGS in Reston, Virginia.

12/17/13 Stu Schwartz was featured on the Marc Steiner Show discussing his ideas about using radishes to break up compacted urban soils.

11/12/13 Aditi Bhaskar successfully defended her PhD dissertation.
10/28/13 Stu Schwartz is featured in the Baltimore Sun discussing the benefits of growing radishes to remediate urban soils.

10/7/13 CUERE welcomes new staff member John Kemper, Research Assistant.

6/15/13 Recent collaboration of GES PhD student Anna Johnson with the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services has focused on urban biodiversity and sustainability. This program is coordinated by the Sustainability in Prisons Project (http://blogs.evergreen.edu/sustainableprisons/about/). Ms. Johnson began working with 13 volunteer female inmates at the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women in March 2013. One project is a field experiment exploring how varying the functional and phylogenetic diversity of native plant species added to a community via seed additions, affects local species diversity, productivity and resistance to weed invasion. The results of this pilot project will become a chapter of Ms. Johnson�s PhD dissertation, and will also inform a larger experimental reclamation of vacant lots in Baltimore City, with the goal of increasing native plant biodiversity. The inmates have worked with Ms. Johnson to set up and maintain the experiment, as well as data collection.

1/2/13 Garth Lindner and Molly Van Appledorn,, PhD students in Geography and Environmental Systems, have received funding from Maryland Sea Grant toward their PhD research.

10/1/12 Dr. Dawn Biehler, Assistant Professor in Geography and Environmental Systems, is a co-PI on a NSF Coupled Natural and Human Systems grant entitled “Urban Disamenities and Pests: Coupled Dynamics of Urban Mosquito Ecology and Human Systems Across Socioeconomically Diverse Communities”. This project will test whether urban social and economic decay and urban infestations of mosquitoes feedback upon one another and, if so, how to break this vicious cycle. A link to the complete project summary can be found here http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1211797

10/1/12 The Baltimore Ecosystem Annual Science meeting will be held on October 24-25. Details can be found on the project web site. http://www.beslter.org/bes_am_asp_2012/bes_am_reg_intro.html

8/28/12 Stu Schwartz, Senior Scientist at CUERE, has received a NFWF grant entitled “Green Infrastructure for Urban Landscapes (MD)”

8/23/12 Dr. Chris Hennigan has joined the Department of Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering as an Assistant Professor. He holds a PhD in Environmental Engineering from Georgia Tech and recently completed a post-doctoral position at Carnegie Mellon in the Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies. Dr. Hennigan’s research interests include air quality, atmospheric chemistry, and climate change. More detail can be found at his web site http://userpages.umbc.edu/~hennigan/

9/1/12 David Lansing, Assistant Professor in Geography and Environmental Systems, has received a notification of a grant award in collaboration with UMD College Park from USDA entitled “Watershed Diagnostics for improved Adoption of Management Practices: Integrating Biophysical and Social Factors”.

7/1/12 Dr. Andrew Miller (GES) and Dr. Upal Ghosh (CBEE) have both received promotion to the rank of full professor.

12/2/11 CUERE welcomes new staff members Corrine Mohnansky (Accounting Associate) and Mike Barnes (Research Assistant).

9/23/11 Dr. Upal Ghosh, Associate Professor of Chemical, Biochemical, and Enviromental Engineering, has received a new NIH award entitled “Combining bioavailability assays with modeling to predict PCBs in fish after remediation”. This research will advance the assessment of remediation effectiveness at Superfund sediment sites through a combination of improving the science of passive sampling, experimentally establishing the link between passive sampling measurement and human health risk drivers such as contaminants in fish, and developing and testing contaminant fate and bioaccumulation models that can use passive sampling measurements for decision making.

9/10/11 Dr. Melanie Harrison, recent UMBC/MEES/IGERT graduate, has just had another paper accepted from her dissertation work: Harrison, M.D., P.M. Groffman, P.M. Mayer, and S.S. Kaushal. 2011. Microbial biomass
and activity in geomorphic features in forested, urban restored and degraded streams. Ecological Engineering (in press).

8/26/11 Stu Schwartz, Senior Scientist with CUERE, has received a new grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation on “Restoring Hydrologic Function in the Urban Landscape”.

7/15/11 Bernadette Hanlon. Research Analyst at CUERE, has accepted a position at Ohio State University as a visiting faculty member in City and Regional Planning. Bernadette was with CUERE since its founding, contributed greatly to the scholarly activity of the unit, and will be missed! We wish her all the best in her new position.

7/6/11 Stu Schwartz and his team are working with Blue Water Baltimore to measure soil properties of lawns in the Baltimore region. Read about it here at http://www.bluewaterbaltimore.org/soil-assessment

6/27/11 CUERE welcomes Joshua Cole, our new Environmental Data Manager. Josh comes to us from U MD College Park, where he was the Technology Development and Training Analyst for the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Josh holds a BS degree in Computer Information Systems from Indiana University and a Masters of GIS from University of Maryland, Office of Professional Studies – Geography.

5/30/11 Mike McGuire, Geopatial Data Services Manager and Assistant Research Scientist with CUERE, has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Sciences at Towson University, effective Fall 2011. WE are very proud of Mike’s accompishment and wish him well in his new career trajectory.

5/15/11 Congratulations to Roxanne Sanderson, undergraduate research assistant with CUERE, who has received an EPA GRO Fellowship to support her junior and senior years at UMBC.

3/28/11 Brian Reed has been selected as a Fulbright Scholar to go to the Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland for the 2011-2012 academic year. The subject of his Fulbright is environmental engineering/engineering education.

3/24/11 CUERE has published a new technical report documenting experiences with deployment of real-time nitrate sensors in subwatersheds of Dead Run, Baltimore. The report can be downloaded from http://www.umbc.edu/cuere/BaltimoreWTB/pdf/TR_2011_001.pdf

2/15/11 Upal Ghosh and collaborators’ work was highlighted this week in a feature article and on the cover of Environmental Science and Technology. The article can be viewed here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es102694h

12/30/10 The USDA Forest Service unit located in Baltimore on UMBC’s campus has relocated to spacious new offices in UMBC’s Research Park. The Forest Service will continue to maintain a field office in the TRC as well as utilize labs in CUERE for sample processing and staging for field work.

12/1/10 Recent journal articles by UMBC IGERT trainees include:

Harrison, Melanie, P. M. Groffman, P. M. Mayer, S. Kaushal, T. Newcomer, “Denitrification in Alluvial Wetlands in an Urban Landscape”, Accepted, 11/26/10, Journal of Environmental Quality.

Sivirichi, Gwen, S. S. Kaushal, P. M. Mayer, C. Welty, K. T. Belt, T. A. Newcomer, K. D. Newcomb and M. M. Grese. 2010. “Longitudinal variability in streamwater chemistry and carbon and nitrogen fluxes in restored and degraded urban stream networks”, Journal of Environmental Monitoring, DOI: 10.1039/c0em00055h.

Dandois, Jonathan P. and E. C. Ellis. 2010. Remote sensing of vegetation structure using computer vision. Remote Sensing 2(4):1157-1176.

A. B. Brand, J. W. Snodgrass, M. T. Gallagher, R. E. Casey, and R. Van Meter, 2010. Lethal and Sublethal Effects of Embryonic and Larval Exposure of Hyla versicolor to Stormwater Pond Sediments, Arch Environ Contam Toxicol., 58:325–331, DOI 10.1007/s00244-009-9373-0.

9/17/10 UMBC, in collaboration with Cary Intitute of Ecosystem Studies, USDA Forest Service, Princeton University, U. MD College Park, Ohio State, Penn State, USGS, and U Rhode Island, has received a NSF Water Sustainability and Climate grant entitled: “Regional Climate Variability and Patterns of Urban Development – Impacts on the Urban Water Cycle and Nutrient Export”. The NSF press release can be found here.

9/7/10 Steward Pickett, PI, has received word that NSF will continue to fund the Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER for another six years. The title of the project is “Baltimore Ecosystem Study, Long-Term Ecological Research:Phase III – Adaptive Processes in the Baltimore Socio-Ecological System: From the Sanitary to the Sustainable City”; the submitted proposal can be viewed here. UMBC is pleased to host the field headquarters for another six years.

7/19/10 Claire Welty served as technical chair of the 2010 CUAHSI Biennial Science Meeting held in Boulder, Colorado.

7/6/2010 CUERE welcomes Julia Friedmann as a new full-time Research Assistant to replace Phil Larson. Julia holds a BS from Michigan State University and a MS from Southern Illinois University.

6/21/10 Chris Swan and Matt Baker of UMBC’s Department of Geography and Environmental Systems have received notification of a forthcoming NSF award from the Division of Environmental Biology to study “The role of network topology and environmental filtering in shaping the ecology of spatially structured communities.”

6/14/10 Rob Ryan and Claire Welty have had an article accepted by Journal of Hydrology entitled “Variation in surface water-groundwater exchange with land use in an urban stream”, 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2010.06.004.

6/14/10 CUERE welcomes summer REU students Roxanne Sanderson and Dakota Smith and high school intern Greg Jackson. Dakota and Greg will be working for Claire Welty on a groundwater quality sampling project; Roxanne will be working woth Mike McGuire on database and web interface programming. Roxanne will also be helping out with field work on multiple projects. Dakota will be attending Penn State in the fall as a freshman meteorology major; Roxanne will be starting her sophomore year as an environmental science major at UMBC. Greg is entering his senior year at North Carroll High School.

5/28/10 Today was Phil Larson’s last day at CUERE. He will be missed and we wish him well!

5/21/10 Michael McGuire of the CUERE staff graduated with his PhD in Information Systems at UMBC.

5/19/10 An article entitled “Effective Curve Number and Hydrologic Design of Pervious Concrete Storm-Water Systems” by Stu Schwartz is to appear in the June issue of ASCE Journal of Hydrologic Engineering.

5/6/10 IGERT trainees Aditi Bhaskar (PhD student, Civil and Environmental Engineering) and Garth Lindner (PhD student, Geography and Environmental Systems) each received an outstanding student award for their papers presented at the 2009 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

10/19/09 CUERE is pleased to host, at the request of NSF, a week-long visit by visting Chinese scientists as aprt of a US-China scientific exchange, culminating in a workshop entitled “Impacts of Climate Change on Water Resources in Coastal, Estuarine, and Urban Areas”

9/28/09 Peter Lapa-Lilly and Sarah Poole have accepted positions with USGS as Hydrologic Science Technicians. They were employed as undergraduate research assistants at CUERE during their junior and senior years, graduating in May 2009 with BS degrees in Environmental Science. Congratulations to Sarah and Peter!

8/16/09 UMBC welcomes new IGERT trainees Aaron Churchill, Nick Magliocca, Laura Merner, Anna Johnson, Danielle Schwartmann, and Sheena Young.

8/10/09 Recent grant notifications received by CUERE include “The Use of Retrospective Hydrologic Forecasts for Forecast System Improvement Using Hydrologic Forecast Verification Concepts” from NOAA (Stu Schwartz, PI); and “Integrating Real-Time Chemical Sensors into Understanding of Groundwater Contributions to Surface Water in a Model Urban Observatory” from NSF (C. Welty, PI).

8/1/09 Congratulations to Bernadette Hanlon of CUERE for her two books in press: Once the American Dream: Inner-ring Suburbs in the Metropolitan United States, Temple University Press, due out December 2009; and Cities and Suburbs: New Metropolitan Realities in the US (co-authors John Rennie Short and Thomas J. Vicino), due out Routledge, October 2009.

7/31/09 Today was Christiane Runyan’s last day at CUERE. She is off to U VA to pursue a PhD in environental science. She will be missed by all!

6/5/09 Stu Schwartz, Senior Scientist at CUERE, has received notification of a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to develop specifications for subsoiling techniques to enhance stormwater infiltration. A press release can be found at http://www.chesapeakebay.net/news_insrg09.aspx?menuitem=36474

4/29/09 UMBC, together with USGS, MDE, MDP, and MGS, co-hosted a workshop entitled “The Roles of Science, Planning, and Regulation in Water Supply Management in Maryland’s Fractured Rock Aquifers” held at UMBC’s South Campus. The workshop was sponsored by Maryland Water Monitoring Council.

12/15/08 The IGERT Visualization and Computation Lab in TRC 001 was recently completed.

11/3/08 UMBC is pleased to announce hosting of the 2009 Darcy Lecturer Dr. Peter Cook from CSIRO Land and Water, Australia who will speak on “Environmental Tracers in Modern Hydrogeology: Reducing Uncertainty in Groundwater Flow Estimation”. The lecture, hosted by the National Association of Groundwater Scoentists and Engineers, is scheduled to be held on May 5, 2009 at USGS in BW Tech Research Park.

9/16/08 IGERT Fellow Robin Van Meter is senior author on a new article in the September issue of Wetlands.

8/27/08 CUERE ran a highly successful pervious concrete workshop today. View the UMBC press coverage and a video of the pour on You Tube.

8/19/08 UMBC welcomes new IGERT trainees Aditi Bhaskar, Jonathan Dandois, Garth Lindner, Michael Pennino, Jeanne Ragsdale, and Tara Willey. Their profiles are posted at http://www.umbc.edu/cuere/igert/profiles.html.

8/15/08 CUERE is pleased to announce its first Pervious Concrete Workshop to be held on 8/27/08, organized by Dr. Stu Schwartz and sponsored by Chesapeake Bay Trust. Read more about it at http://www.umbc.edu/cuere/pdf/PerviousConcrete.pdf

8/11/08 Ian Yesilonis of the USFS is senior author of two new articles on lead in Baltimore soils. (See CUERE’s publications page).

3/3/08 CUERE welcomes new employee Christiane Runyan. Ms. Runyan holds a BS degree from U. Wyoming and is currently completing a MS degree in Environmental Science and Policy at the Johns Hopkins University. She joins the CUERE staff as a full-time research assistant, working with Phil Larson to deploy, maintain, and analyze data from our network of hydrologic equipment.

2/1/08 UMBC is pleased to co-host the 2008 Darcy Lecture. Dr. Michael Celia will present “Geological Storage as a Carbon Mitigation Option” on 3/24/08 at USGS MD-DE-DC Water Science Centerat UMBC’s BWTech Research Park, 5522 Research Park Drive, Baltimore, MD 21228 http://md.water.usgs.gov/

1/17/08 Dr. Bernadette Hanlon, Research Analyst with CUERE, has received a contract with Temple University Press for a book entitled Once the American Dream: Inner-Ring Suburbs of the Metropolitan U.S., which is based on her PhD dissertation defended in September 2007.

1/17/08 Dr. Chris Swan, Assistant Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems and CUERE Faculty Fellow, has received a grant from Maryland Water Resources Research Center entitled, ” Microbial nitrogen sequestration in detrital-baseams of the Chesapeake Bay watershed under stress from road-salt runoff”.

1/18/08 A technical report authored by Lisa Fraley, Andrew Miller, and Claire Welty has been released by National Park Service. Technical Report NPS/NER/NRTR�2007/095, entitled “Characterization of Sediment Storage and Remobilization in Valley Creek, Valley Forge National Historical Park”, can be downloaded from here. Lisa Fraley earned her BS (2003) and MS (2006) from UMBC and is currently employed with the Center for Watershed Protection in Ellicott City, MD. Andrew Miller is Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems and CUERE Faculty Fellow. Claire Welty is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of CUERE.

12/21/07 CUERE welcomes new employee Mark Sibug, Environmental Database Specialist, who is working with Mike McGuire in CUERE’s Spatial Data Analysis Laboratory. Mark is a 2007 UMBC graduate from the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems.

10/24/07 USGS held an open house to welcome the community to its new building at UMBC/BW Tech research park.

10/1/07 CUERE has received a $3M grant from NOAA, “Integrating Real-Time Sensor Networks, Data Assimilation, and Predictive Modeling to Assess the Effects of Climate Variability on Water Resources in an Urbanizing Landscape”. The project summary can be viewed here.

9/17/07 Dr. Stuart Schwartz, Senior Research Scientist with CUERE, has received a grant from Chesapeake Bay Trust entitled “Pervious concrete: technology demonstration and information needs”.

9/5/07 Bernadette Hanlon successfully defended her PhD dissertation in Public Policy entitled “The decline of older, inner suburbs: A new reality in the U.S.”

9/1/07 In collaboration with LLNL, Princeton, and Shippensburg, CUERE has received a NSF Biocomplexity grant entitled “Dynamic Coupling of the Water Cycle with Patterns of Urban Growth”. The project summary can be viewd here.

9/1/07 CUERE welcomes four new undergraduate research assistants: Dan Hoff, Mark Sibug, Pater Lapa-Lilly and Sarah Poole.

8/15/07 UMBC welcomes new IGERT Fellows Barbara Beckingham (CEE), Tracy Kerchkof (CEE), Gwen Stanko (MEES), and Olyssa Starry (Geography and Environmental Systems).

8/15/07 The MD-DE-DC USGS building in UMBC’s Research Park was completed in July and USGS moved to campus on 8/11/07.

7/1/07 Dr. Claire Welty has been named Chair of the Water Science and Technology Board of the National Research Council.

6/15/07 CUERE welcomes new employee Philip Larson as a full-time Hydrologic Science Technician/Research Assistant. Mr. Larson holds a BS in Water Resources from University of Wisconsin Stevens Point and will be reponsible for deploying and maintaining our new network of hydrologic equipment.

6/1/07 CUERE welcomes Dr. Jeffrey Campbell as a staff Research Scientist. Dr. Campbell was previously a professor in UMBC’s Department of Information Systems.

4/1/07 The MD-DE-DC USGS building in UMBC’s Research Park is progressing on schedule and a move is set for August 13, 2007.

2/1/07 A new CUERE report funded by the Center for AgroEcology has been released. The report, co-authored by Bernadette Hanlon, and Marie Howland (U MD College Park), and Michael McGuire, is entitled Demographic Change and the Expansion of Urban Areas in Maryland, 1970 to 2000. The report can be downloaded from http://www.agroecol.umd.edu/

1/1/07 Dr. Claire Welty has become the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. for 2007 (http://www.cuahsi.org).

12/1/06 The 2007 Darcy Lecturer, Dr.James Butler, Jr.,will present his lecture “Getting the Information Ground Water Modelers Need: A Report from the Field” on September 10, 2007 on the UMBC campus in the new USGS building.

11/1/06 UMBC has received a grant from NSF to establish a test-bed environmental observatory focused on urban groundwater. C. Welty is PI; partners are USGS, USFS, Princeton University, UVa, UNC, Widener U., and IES.

8/29/06 CUERE welcomes Dr. Laura Lewis, Assistant Professor in Geography and Environmental Systems. Dr. Lewis’ is primary interest is in the biogeography of crop species particularly those of African origin. Her research focuses on agricultural dynamics with an emphasis on ethnobiology, genetic resource management, and conservation in traditional farming systems. Her present work takes place in warm, semi-arid, and arid regions, particularly the Sahara and the Sahel of Africa. A second research interest is agrobiodiversity of the urban landscape. This work focuses on the types of agricultural products available to the urban community at various spatial scales, where those products are grown and processed, and who utilizes these agricultural commodities for consumption or commercial gain.

8/14/06 UMBC welcomes its first cohort of IGERT Trainees, who are now in residence: Dan Miles, PhD student in Public Policy/Economics track; Yvette Williams, Melanie Harrison. and Robin van Meter, PhD students in the Marine Estuarine and Environmental Science Program. The Trainees will be working with faculty mentors Virginia McConnell/Scott Farrow, Steward Pickett, Peter Groffman, and Chris Swan. We are all looking forward to a productive and exciting year as we launch the program.

7/11/06 Tom Vicino, CUERE staff member and PhD candidate in the Department of Public Policy, successfully defended his PhD dissertation entitled “Suburban Crossroads: An Analysis of Socioeconomic Change in Baltimore�s First-Tier Suburbs, 1970 to 2000”. Dr. Vicino has accepted a faculty position at Univerity of Texas Arlington beginning Fall 2006.

6/29/06 Today the USGS MD-DE-DC Water Science Center broke ground for its new building on UMBC campus to be complete in spring 2007. The UMBC press release can be viewed at http://www.umbc.edu/NewsEvents/releases//archives/2006/06/umbc_usgs_to_ce_1.html

5/3/06 UMBC has received an official award letter on the NSF IGERT award. We are now recruiting for a cohort of Trainees for Fall of 2007. The grant proposal and instructions for application can be viewed at http://www.umbc.edu/cuere/igert.

4/21/06 CUERE, in collaboration with USGS, is pleased to host the 2006 Darcy Lecturer, Dr. Eileen Poeter, who will speak on “All Models Are Wrong: How Do We Know Which Are Useful?” Dr. Poeter is a Professor at the Colorado School of Mines.

3/13/06 UMBC announced today that the USGS MD-DE-DC Water Science Center will move to campus in 2007 under a long-term cooperative agreement. The UMBC press release can be viewed at
http://www.umbc.edu/NewsEvents/releases//archives/2006/03/us_geological_s.html

1/26/06 CUERE has received notice from NSF for recommendation of an IGERT award on the theme “Water in the Urban Environment”. We are now recruiting for a cohort of Trainees for Fall of 2006. The grant proposal and instructions for application can be viewed at http://www.umbc.edu/cuere/igert

1/13/06 Claire Welty has been elected as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI) for 2007. She will serve as chair-elect in 2006.

12/1/05 CUERE welcomes Dr. Stuart Schwartz, Senior Scientist, to its research staff. Dr. Schwartz received his Ph.D. in Geography and Environmental Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University in 1988, specializing water resource systems analysis. He has held research positions at Cleveland State University, University of North Carolina, and the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin. Dr. Schwartz is a pioneer in championing the use of a systems approach for decision-making affecting urban landscapes. He is currently developing a set of spatial decision tools to evaluate the environmental, economic, and social dimensions of development across scales ranging from decisions at the level of home purchases and individual lot characteristics to neighborhood, community, catchment and watershed scales that would determine the ecological sustainability of urbanizing streams and the social and economic sustainability of regional growth. This kind of work is a perfect fit with the mission of CUERE and our multidisciplinary approach to environmental research.

9/20/05 CUERE and The College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences will present a special symposium on Hurricane Katrina on Thursday, September 29, 2005 from 4 -6 PM in the University Center Ballroom. Details of the program are provided on the CUERE seminar page at http://www.umbc.edu/cuere/SeminarSeries.html.

8/1/05 CUERE welcomes new UMBC environmental faculty members Dr. Robert Neff, Assistant Professor of Geography, and Dr. Scott Farrow, Professor and Chair of Economics.

7/15/05 Dr. Brian Reed and 24 other faculty from UMBC and Howard University received an MRI Grant from NSF for “Acquisition of an ICP-MS and an IC by UMBC for Use in Environmental and Human Health Research�.

6/29/05 CUERE’s annual report to UMBC Provost Dr. Arthur Johnson for the period 7/1/04 – 6/30/05 is now available and can be downloaded from http://www.umbc.edu/cuere/pdf/CUERE_Annual_Report_2005.pdf.

6/28/05 Tingping Ouyang, Visiting Scientist with CUERE, has recently published a paper in Journal of Environmental Monitoring. Her photograph of the Pearl River is featured on the cover of the July issue of the journal. The citation for her article is:

Ouyang, T., Z. Zhu, and Y. Kuang “River Water Quality and Pollution Sources in the Pearl River Delta, China”, Journal of Environmental Monitoring, 7(7), 664 – 669, 2005.

5/12/05
Today CUERE released a new report, “The State of the Inner Suburbs: An Examination of Suburban Baltimore, 1980 to 2000,” available for download at http://www.umbc.edu/cuere/inner_ring. The report is co-authored by Bernadette Hanlon and Thomas Vicino of CUERE, both of whom are also Ph.D. candidates in UMBC’s Department of Public Policy. A story on the report appears today both on the front page of the Baltimore Sun http://www.baltimoresun.com/ and the Maryland Daily Record http://www.mddailyrecord.com/. UMBC’s official news release can be accessed from http://www.umbc.edu/NewsEvents/releases/article.phtml?news_id=1231

Recognizing that many inner suburbs in the Northeast and Midwest are experiencing economic and social problems normally associated with central cities, the report presents a case study of Baltimore’s inner suburbs to quantitatively assess evidence of change. Many of these older suburbs have experienced declines in household income, and are struggling to cope with the problems of an aging population and local infrastructure. Fast-developing suburbs on the outer fringe of the Baltimore metropolitan area are far outpacing these older suburbs on a variety of measures including school performance, housing values, wages and population growth. Recent transformations in the local and regional economy, a housing market that favors the outer suburbs, and a shrinking fiscal base, each negatively affect the inner suburbs.

Public policies aimed at revitalization of the existing physical, economic and social infrastructure in these older communities would be an efficient allocation of regional resources. Such revitalization will reduce sprawling development in the outer fringes of the metropolitan area; preserve the region’s natural environment; and create viable, healthy and livable communities for local residents.

5/5/05 Based on a strong preproposal, Dr. Claire Welty and 31 other faculty from UMBC and Howard University were invited to submit a full NSF IGERT proposal, due 8/5/05. The proposal is entitled “Water in the Urban Environment”.

4/22/05
Led by GES Environmental Science major and CUERE research assistant Tammy Newcomer, UMBC celebrated Earth Day by planting more than 300 trees on campus. The event drew over 120 volunteers, who were guided by USFS scientist Ian Yesilonis on proper planting and mulching techniques. The tree saplings were purchased by CUERE and additional funding for the event was provided by the UMBC Student Government Association. Read more at http://www.umbc.edu/newsevents/insights/archives/2005/04/kudos_25.html

3/1/05
This month CUERE will host visitors from France, Germany, and Australia who are working in the area of urban sustainability.

On March 7, 2005 Dr. Philippe Jamet, Attach� for Science and Technology for the Embassy of France in Washington D.C., will bring 32 students and two professors from the French Institute for Environmental Engineering and Management to meet with CUERE faculty and staff from 1:30 � 3:30 PM in TRC 206. The students are visiting Baltimore from March 5 � 9 as part of a case study program to examine Baltimore�s sustainability policies.

The Institute for Environmental Engineering and Management is a postgraduate course that was founded in 1992 by the association of three major engineering schools of the ParisTech consortium: �cole des Mines de Paris, �cole des Ponts et Chauss�es, and �cole du G�nie Rural, des Eaux et des For�ts. The founding of the program resulted from the Rio Conference in 1992 that highlighted the need to achieve sustainable development. ISIGE is dedicated to the training of the high level, multidisciplinary project managers able to answer to the new challenges associated to sustainable development. ISIGE�s course is a one-year curriculum divided into a 6-month academic training and a 6-month internship.

The Urban Sustainability module is a case-study training. Every year, the ISIGE management selects a city where comprehensive policies are currently implemented to cope with sustainability challenges. This case study is based on meetings with city stakeholders and field visits, to achieve a holoistic view of the city issues, strategies and achievements (e.g., management of heritage, urban ecology, social aspects, economic aspects, governance.) Former Urban Sustainability case-studies include: Lisbon (Portugal), Florence (Italy), Barcelona (Spain), Edinburgh (UK), Budapest (Hungary). The Baltimore case-study is the first to be selected outside European Union.

On March 18, 2005, Dr. Ellen Banzhaf from the Department of Applied Landscape Ecology, Centre for Environmental Research Leipzig-Halle, Germany (http://www.ufz.de), will meet with CUERE staff to explore common research interests. At 10 AM Dr. Banzhaf will present a seminar entitled “Towards Sustainable Use of Urban Areas: Monitoring and Modeling Approaches” in TRC 206. This visit represents an ongoing exchange between CUERE and the UFZ. In February 2004 Dr. Ulrike Weiland of UFZ visited UMBC and in February 2005 Dr. Claire Welty visited the UFZ in Leipzig.

On March 24, 2005, Dr. Matthew Beaty of the CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems program in Canberra, Australia (http://www.cse.csiro.au) will meet with CUERE staff to discuss urban education and research strategies and experiences. Dr. Beatty is working to help develop a new research focus on sustainable urbanization and urban ecology. CSIRO’s interest in this area lies primarily in developing research capacity for coupled social-ecological studies of Australian cities and the urbanizing landscapes that surround them. One of Dr. Beaty’s current projects is examining relationships between changing urban spatial patterns, public health, and biodiversity in Sydney. Dr. Beaty was recently awarded a travelling fellowship from the Australian Government to visit urban research groups in the United States, participate in conferences in the US and Canada, and develop a comparative, pilot research project between the US and Australia.

2/23/05
On March 16, 2005 CUERE will host an all-day meeting (10 AM – 3 PM) of the CUAHSI Potomac HO writing team in TRC 206.

2/15/05
The U.S. EPA Mid-Atlantic Integrated Assessment (MAIA) has published a new case study, written by CUERE RA and Public Policy Ph.D. Candidate Tom Vicino. The report, High Radium Levels in Anne Arundel County Drinking Water Corrected: Partnerships and Collaboration Made The Difference, is an examination of the best environmental management practices. It is the product of a graduate-level seminar course in public policy that EPA and UMBC initiated in 2001. The report is part of a series of research projects to help environmental managers make informed decisions about the challenges they face. The report can be viewed at http://www.epa.gov/maia/html/aaradium.html.

1/13/05
Steve Sharkey, a CUERE research assistant and Public Policy doctoral student, has accepted a semester-long position as a Baltimore Citistat Fellow for the Spring of 2005. The citistat fellowship is a collaboration between UMBC’s department of Public Policy and the City of Baltimore. Citistat , pioneered by Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, relies on data collection and analysis to hold city agencies accountable.

1/18/05
UMBC and the USGS MD-DE-DC office will co-host the 2005 Darcy Lecture on May 4, 2005 at 10:30 AM in TRC 206. Dr. Kip Solomon, a geology professor and director of the Noble Gas Laboratory at the University of Utah, has been named the 2005 Darcy Distinguished Lecturer by the National Ground Water Association. Solomon’s lecture is titled “Inert Gas Tracers in Ground Water.” The lecture will illustrate the basic concepts of using inert gas tracers along with case studies that describe their applications to real ground water flow problems. The case studies will focus on ground water dating, noble gas thermometry or inert gas tracers, depending on the interests of the hosting institution.

12/14/04
CUERE RAs and Affilated Faculty have had five papers accepted to the Urban Affairs
Association conference to be held in Salt Lake City in April, 2005. Titles and authors are: (1)
” Affordable Housing in Metropolitan Maryland” by Tom Vicino and Steve Sharkey; (2) The Impact of Urbanization on a Transitional County” by Bernadette Hanlon, Tom Vicino, and Steve Sharkey; (3) ” An Urban Policy to Reduce Impervious Surface Coverage for Environmental Sustainability” by Steve Sharkey, Bernadette Hanlon and Tom Vicino; PANEL: New Patterns of Socioeconomic Diversity in Metropolitan America”; Panel Organizers: Bernadette Hanlon and Tom Vicino;
Moderator: Prof. Donald Norris, UMBC Dept of Public Policy; Papers: (1) ” Megalopolis Revisited: Neighborhoods In A Giant Urban Region” by Prof. John Rennie Short (GES), Tom Vicino, and Bernadette Hanlon; (2) ” The Fate of Inner Suburbs: Evidence from Metropolitan Baltimore” by Bernadette Hanlon and Tom Vicino; (3) ” Pulling Apart: The Rise of Economic Segregation Among Cities and Suburbs, 1980-2000″ by Todd Swanstrom, Peter Dreier, and Colleen Casey

12/7/04
Dr. Claire Welty was elected to a new 3-year term on the Board of Directors of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. She will also serve as an At-Large Member of the CUAHSI Executive Committee.

12/1/04
The BES Quarterly Science Meeting will be held in TRC 206 on January 19, 2005 on Stream Restoration.

12/1/04
UMBC and SERC (Smithsonian Environmental Research Center) will join together in a scientific information exchange in an all-day workshop for their faculty and graduate students at SERC on 1/18/05. Co-convenors are Claire Welty and Tom Jordan (SERC).

12/1/04
CUERE Faculty Fellow Dr. Upal Ghosh of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has been awarded funds from the Department of Defense for Field Testing of Activated Carbon Mixing and In Situ Stabilization of PCBs in Sediment. This three year project will demonstrate an innovative treatment for in situ stabilization of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in sediment under field conditions at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

12/1/04
CUERE’s Assistant Director Amy Rynes and Tom Vicino, Public Policy Ph.D. candidate and CUERE Research Assistant, have been asked to serve on Citizen Planning and Housing Committee’s Housing Association (CPHA) Regional Housing Committee. This committee will be meeting quarterly to create a strategy aimed at developing and promoting environmentally friendly smart growth strategies by promoting communities of opportunity throughout the region.

12/1/04
CUERE will host “Urban Landscapes”, the 2005 conference of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Ecological Society of America. The meeting will be held on Saturday March 12, 2005 from 8 am -7 pm on the campus of UMBC. On Sunday March 13, 2005, there will be a field trip to the Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTERsite. Early bird registration is due December 10, 2005 and February 4, 2005 for regular registration. Further information can be found at http://esa.org/midatlantic.

12/1/04
CUERE RA and Ph.D. Public Policy Candidate Steve Sharkey was recently invited to speak at a panel discussion sponsored by the Center for Arts and Visual Culture at UMBC. The discussion was titled “Community Building by Design: Affordable Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization”. Steve offered data to show the extent of the affordable housing crisis in Maryland and provided comments on policy alternatives. The panel discussion was paired with an art exhibit that displayed novel affordable housing designs incorporating green techniques and materials into the construction process throughout Baltimore and Washington.

11/12/04
Dr. Nagaraj Neerchal, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, has been named Associate Editor of Environmental Modeling and Assessment. ENMO is a leading international journal dedicated to quantitative papers in environmental science.

11/1/04
The quarterly science meeting of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study will be held in the TRC 206 on January 19, 2005. The topic of the meeting is ecosystem impacts of stream restoration.

11/1/04
Tom Vicino, CUERE Research Assistant and Public Policy Ph.D. Candidate, presented the paper “The Technology-Knowledge Transfer Approach and Innovative Methods for Teaching Public Policy: The Case of Best Environmental Management Practices in Maryland” at the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management�s 26th Annual Fall Research Conference Oct. 28-30, 2004 in Atlanta.

10/1/04
CUERE’s Geospatial Data Services Manager, Mike McGuire, presented a paper at the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) Sept 12 – 16, 2004 conference in Kansas City, Missouri. His paper, “Using DTM and LIDAR Data to Analyze Human-Induced Topographic Change”, examined the impact of suburban development on topographic alteration. He found that average slope before development positively correlates with overall topographic change.

10/1/04
Mike McGuire and Dr. Laura Hungerford and others from the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine presented a paper, “Use of a Geographic Information System to Examine Spatial Patterns in Maryland FoodNet Data”at the Annual Meeting of the American College of Epidemiology in Boston, Sept 11-14, 2004. This work mapped the distribution of disease, demographics and environmental factors.

9/1/04
Ms. Tingping Ouyang, environmental science doctoral student at Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, is in residence at CUERE this year studying land cover/land use mapping techniques with Dr. Youngsinn Sohn of the Geography and Environmental Systems department. Ms. Ouyangholds a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Jiangxi Normal University and a master’s degree in environmental sciencec from the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry. Her research interests are i n remote sensing, land use and land cover change, GIS applications, and urban ecology.

8/1/04
The Baltimore Ecosystem Study will hold its annual science meeting on the South Campus of UMBC on October 21-22, 2004. This meeting is open to the public. Driving directions and a campus map can be found at http://www.umbc.edu/AboutUMBC/CampusMap/.

7/6/04
CUERE research assistants and Public Policy Ph.D. candidates Steve Sharkey, Bernadette Hanlon, and Tom Vicino have been awarded a grant under U.S. EPA�s P3 national student design competition. The EPA P3 Award program provides funds to teams of students to research, develop, and design solutions to sustainability challenges. P3 highlights “people, prosperity, and the planet” � the three pillars of sustainability � as the next step beyond P2 or pollution prevention. The winning CUERE submission, entitled �Using An Impervious Permit Allowance System To Reduce Impervious Surface Coverage for Environmental Sustainability�, will establish a cap on impervious surfaces on a per lot basis in watersheds of specific size. Similar to the acid rain �cap and trade� program, this policy design will allow land developers to trade �impervious surface credits� and will offer flexibility in how developers choose to reduce impervious surface coverage. Market-based approaches will be applied to reduce pollution, making pervious surface a valued good. A product of the project will be a strategic manual for policymakers and practitioners interested in implementing the policy program. Faculty advisors for the design team are Drs. Claire Welty and Royce Hanson

6/8/04
Dr. Claire Welty, Director of CUERE and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been appointed to the National Research Council’s Water Science and Technology Board, effective July 1, 2004, for a term of three years. The Water Science and Technology Board provides a focal point for studies related to water resources under the aegis of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. The board’s objective is to improve the scientific and technological basis for resolving important questions and issues associated with the efficient management and use of water resources. The scope of the board’s work covers all dimensions of water resources, including science, engineering, economics, policy, educational issues, and social aspects.

4/26/04
CUERE Research Assistant Tom Vicino and Research Analyst Bernadette Hanlon won first place for Best Oral Presentation at the The 26th Annual University of Maryland Graduate School Research Conference held at UMBC on April 23, 2004. Both were presenters of the paper entitled, “The New Metropolitan Reality: Rethinking the Traditional Model”. This paper is co-authored with Dr. John Short, Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems, and is currently under review with the Journal of Urban Affairs.

4/20/04
CUERE will host a meeting on Wednesday, April 28 (10 AM – 2 PM), at UMBC in TRC 206 to discuss the Baltimore flash flood forecasting project. Participants will include representatives from NWS, USGS, UMBC, Princeton, Baltimore City and Baltimore County governments. Presentations will be made on current work in Moores Run and Dead Run, as well as planned activities in Whitemarsh Run and Gwynns Falls.

4/15/04
CUERE will host a meeting on May 4. 2004 (10 AM – 3 PM) in TRC 206 on behalf of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) to discuss options for proposing a Hydrologic Observatory for the MidAtlantic region as part of a new national network.

3/15/04
Ms. Katrina Charles, Ph.D. Candidate at University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, will be vising CUERE from 4/2 – 4/6/04. Ms. Charles will present a seminar entitled “Septics, Pathogens, Nutrients, and in Sydney’s Water Supply Watershed” on Monday, April 5, 2004 in TRC 206 at Noon.

2/20/04
CUERE, in collaboration with the USGS MD-DE-DC District office, is pleased to announce that it will host the 2004 Darcy Lecture. Dr. Allen Shapiro, Hydrologist with the USGS National Research Program, will present a lecture entitled “Ground Water Flow and Chemical Transport in Fractured Rock: From Cores to Kilometers.” The lecture will be held on Monday 4/26/04 from 1 – 2 PM in the new ITE building, Lecture Hall VIII, on the campus of UMBC.

2/15/03
Michael McGuire of the CUERE staff, working with Chris Swan, Assistant Professor in Geography and Environmental Systems, has been instrumental in getting up and running CUERE’s hosting of the Maryland Water Monitoring Council’s Interactive Mapping System. Please visit http://cuereims.umbc.edu/mwmc/ to access this interactive mapping system.

2/11/04
Bernadette Hanlon, Research Analyst with CUERE, and Virginia McConnell, Professor of Economics at UMBC, have both received grants from the Maryland Center for AgroEcology. Ms. Hanlon, in collaboration with Dr. Marie Howland of UMD College Park, will study “The Impact of Demographic Change and the Expansion of Urban Areas in Rural Maryland Since 1970”. Dr. McConnell, together with Dr. Margaret Walls from Resources for the Future in Washington, DC will pursue “Markets for Preserving Land in Maryland: Can the Role of Transferable Development Rights be Enhanced?”

2/9/04
Mr. Jo�o Vasconcelos, MS candidate at the New University of Science and Technology, Lisbon, and researcher in the Geography Department at University of Lisbon, is in residence with CUERE for six weeks to work under the guidance of Dr. Gordon Heisler of the U.S. Forest Service and Baltimore Ecosystem Study on the interaction of the urban heat island and local climate effects. Mr. Vasconcelos was recently the co-author on a paper presented at a conference in Poland entitled “Urban Morphology Characterization to Include a GIS for Climate Purposes In Lisbon: Discussion of Two Different Methods” in which he describes techniques for mapping the three-dimensional physical features of cities to correlate to urban thermal patterns. A copy of his paper can be found here.

2/5/04
Dr. Ulrike Weiland, Head of the Department Urban Regions at the Environmental Research Institute (UFZ) in Leipzig, Germany, will be visiting CUERE on February 18-19 to exchange information with CUERE on projects ongoing at the two institutions and to explore the potential for future collaborations.

1/30/04
Bernadette Hanlon and Tom Vicino of CUERE in collaboration with John Short, Professor and Chair of Geography and Environmental Systems, have submitted a paper entitled “The New Metropolitan: Rethinking the Traditional Model” to the Journal of Urban Affairs.

1/22/04
Under the leadership of Andrew Miller, Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems, CUERE has submitted a proposal to the NSF Biocomplexity competition entitled “Linked Biogeochemical Cycles in Urban Watersheds: Hydrologic Drivers and Ecosystem Response”. Co-PIs are Peter Jaffe, Jim Smith and Bess Ward of Princeton University, Peter Groffman of the Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Michael Paul of Howard University, Gary Fisher of the USGS, and Chris Swan and Claire Welty of UMBC.

1/21/04
Under the leadership of Brian Reed, Associate Professor and Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering, CUERE has submitted a MRI proposal to NSF entitled “Acquisition of an ICP-MS and an IC by UMBC for Use in Environmental and Human Health Research at UMBC and Howard University”. Co-PIs are Claire Welty, Upal Ghosh, Jack Gwo, Andrew Miller, Chris Swan, Youngsinn Sohn, Ray Hoff, Timothy Topoleski, Veronica Szalai, and William LaCourse of UMBC, Rich Pouyat and Ken Belt of the U.S. Forest Service, Peter Groffman of the Institute of Ecosystem Studies, and Michael Paul, Kimberly Jones and Vernon Morris of Howard University.

1/15/04
Under the leadership of Dr. Kathy Szlavecz of Johns Hopkins University, Rich Pouyat (U.S. Forest Service) and Ian Yesilonis of CUERE have submitted a proposal to NSF entitled: “Earthworms and Nitrogen Cycling in Urban Riparian Zones”.

1/7/04
Claire Welty and Michael McGuire of CUERE in collaboration with Michael Piasecki of Drexel University have submitted a proposal to NSF entitled: “Collaborative Research (CLEANER): Cyberinfrastructure Needs for an Environmental Field Facility in Baltimore, MD as part of an Engineering Analysis Network”.

11/17/04
In collaboration with the Shriver Center at UMBC, CUERE has submitted a proposal to NSF’s Informal Science Education Program entitled “Science Exploration and Exposure at the Crossroads”.

10/27/03
CUERE hosted the annual meeting of the Chesapeake Cooperative Ecosystem Study Unit (CESU) at the South Campus facilities of UMBC.

10/1/03
Dr. Claire Welty started as the new permanent Director of CUERE and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She was previously at Drexel University for 15 years, where she was Associate Director of the School of Environmental Science, Engineering, and Policy and Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering. Dr. Welty is a groundwater hydrologist by training and is particularly excited to be interacting with the multidisciplinary group at UMBC and the NSF-funded Baltimore Ecosystem Study.

7/10/03
Amy Rynes has been invited by Kendl Philbrick, Acting Secretary of the MD Dept of the Environment, to participate as a member of the Environmental Restoration and Development Task Force, which will meet from Sept – Dec 2003. The purpose of the group is to review Maryland’s existing brownfields and Voluntary Clean Up Program legislation and recommend legislative amendments to spur cleanup and redevelopment of contaminated industrial properties.