Colleen's first prize poster!

Post date: Nov 4, 2015 4:28:24 PM

Colleen Baublitz, a thesis-track master's student in the Air Quality and Climate research, won first place in the Florida Air & Waste Management Association Conference Student Poster Competition on October 28, 2015.  She presented preliminary results for our evaluation of the ecological impacts of climate policy that promotes biofuel use.  While biofuels are carbon neutral and often thought to be sustainable for that reason, it's been shown that the fertilizer required to produce biofuels (especially in the case of corn in the United States) emits several reactive nitrogen compounds that can negate their climate benefit and deteriorate sensitive ecosystems via deposition.  This project aims to provide insight into enhanced climate policy by comparing impacts as they are distributed through space and time, made possible with the GEOS-Chem adjoint.  We look forward to new findings from this project and to more feedback from regulators, professionals and the community at large as we continue to circulate our results.