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Naturally Occurring Fungi Could Curb Moose Tick Plague, UVM Entomologists Find

Cheryl Sullivan was in the woods one warm October day, flicking yet another tick from her leg, “which felt like the tenth of the day,” she says.

Lyme-disease bearing deer ticks like the ones climbing on Sullivan, a Ph.D. student in UVM’s Entomology Research Lab, were certainly causing problems for humans, she remembers thinking. But a different species – the winter tick – was an even worse scourge for one of the northern woods most iconic species, the moose, for whom the parasite was an existential threat. A 2018 study published in the Canadian Journal of Zoology found that winter ticks, also known as moose ticks, were the primary cause of an unprecedented 70 percent death rate among moose calves in northern New England over a three-year period.

“I was thinking about the work that we did at the lab, and it’s like, gosh, I wonder if granular fungus would work on moose ticks,” she says, referring to the insect-killing fungi in granular formulation her colleagues had used to effectively control pests like the pear thrips, which attacks maple trees.

Two years later, more than 30,000 moose tick larvae have taken up residence at the lab, and Sullivan and her advisors, entomologists Bruce Parker and Margaret Skinner, have demonstrated that natural bio-pesticide formulations containing fungi like Metarhizium anisopliae have the potential to derail the moose tick epidemic. 

In the lab, the fungus, depending on dose and application method, kills 37 to 100 percent of the larvae it comes in contact with.

Horror movie

No tick species inspires much human affection, but the winter tick’s habits are especially gruesome. Unlike the deer tick, which attaches itself to three progressively larger hosts over a two-year cycle, the winter tick limits itself to one host –a large ungulate like a moose, elk or sometimes a cow or horse – and lives for just one year.

In the spring, winter tick females drop off their host, lay eggs and die. The larvae hatch in the summer, clump together in groups of several thousand and lie dormant at the soil surface.

In fall the larval clusters seem to borrow a scene from a horror movie.

To quest for a host, they shimmy up vegetation en masse, seen above. When one comes into their vicinity, which the larvae can both see and sense via chemicals like CO2 or the heat and vibrations they emanate, they climb on top of one another to form a bloodthirsty strand. When the top tick reaches the host, those below swing on board.

“It’s kind of like follow the leader,” Sullivan says.

That coordinated group behavior, multiplied many times over, is why dead moose are discovered covered with an average of 47,000 ticks, making them anemic and vulnerable to a host of threats, a condition calves are especially prone to.

Climate change is a key driver of the moose tick plague. Shorter, warmer winters make it more likely that adult moose ticks will land on earth and leaves when they drop off their hosts rather than snow and ice, which kill the parasites before they can lay eggs. And longer falls extend the questing period.

Returning the favor

If the winter tick is a ruthless killer, the remedy Sullivan, Parker and Skinner have in mind returns the favor and then some.

The Metarhizium anisopliae fungus, which has many different strains that occur naturally in the soil, is a natural enemy of the tick, which it kills by penetrating its cuticle or outer shell.

That occurs in two ways, Parker says. “One is a mechanical pressure that the fungus exerts. The other is by emitting chemicals that help dissolve” the outer layer. Once inside, more chemicals are emitted by the fungus that “kill or completely engulf the inner portion of the tick.”  

While the approach is promising in the lab, more work needs to be done before the team is ready to say it will work in the field. 

“There are a lot of dimensions to that,” Sullivan says. A key one is finding the optimal habitat for both moose and the fungi and then determining exactly how and at what rate to apply the granular formulation.

If and when that happens, the winter tick larva’s habits could make it especially vulnerable. The fungi inhabit the same mix of soil and leaves that larvae find attractive, both thrive in warm, humid conditions, and the larvae’s long dormancy during the summer gives the fungi ample opportunity to find and neutralize clusters.

While naturally occurring fungi are probably killing tick larvae to a limited degree, Sullivan and her colleagues envision one day spreading granular Metarhizium anisopliae throughout a localized area of prime moose habitat, once they’ve worked out the application and dosage challenges.

 “If we can give nature a hand by boosting the fungal components that are already in the ecosystem,” she says, “that could be a difference-maker.”  

The research project has received support from the U.S .Fish & Wildlife Service; Wildlife & Sport Fish Restoration Program, Wildlife Restoration Grants, U.S. Geological Survey and the American Wildlife Conservation Foundation. It is part of an ongoing partnership between the USGS Vermont Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, the UVM Wildlife and Fisheries Biology Program, and Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department.

Source: UVM News

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University of Vermont to Host United Nations Biosphere Delegation

On October 11, representatives from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Man and Biosphere Program (MAB) and the U.S. National Park Service will gather at the University of Vermont for the Champlain-Adirondack Biosphere Reserve’s (CABR) Annual Meeting.  The meeting will focus on how to improve human interaction with protected landscapes in order to maintain social, economic and ecological integrity.

 Cliff McCreedy and Jon Putnam from the U.S. National Park Service will kick off the meeting on the long-standing importance of biosphere reserves in developing the science of sustainability.  McCreedy is the Science and Stewardship Coordinator at the U.S. Park Service and directs the U.S. MAB Program, while Putnam is the World Heritage Program Officer and Western Hemisphere Park Affairs Specialist.

Representatives from the World Network of Biosphere Reserves will also give presentations on nearby biosphere reserves in Quebec and Ontario, as well as reserves in Brazil and Ukraine.  Presentations from organizations in Vermont and New York will illustrate the use of the Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for local sustainability initiatives.  A highlight to the day will be signing a “twinning agreement” between CABR and the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Network in Ontario, in part to “develop and strengthen models for rural community sustainable development.”

“In the face of unprecedented human impact on Earth’s life support systems, we need international sharing and coordination at bioregional scales now more than ever,” says Jon Erickson, the Blittersdorf Professor of Sustainability Science and Policy at the University of Vermont and host of the meeting.  “Our shared future depends on the ecological connectivity of our landscapes, the resilience of our renewable resources, and diverse learning communities.”

In 1976, UNESCO began designating biospheres with the aim “to establish a scientific basis for the improvement of relationships between people and their environments.” Now in its fifth decade, a growing network of 701 biosphere reserves in 124 countries is the proving ground for “sustainable development,” the balancing act of the environment’s capacity to support our economic aspirations.

“The urgency of the climate crisis makes clear humanity is dependent on the health and stability of the earth system that we share with all life. But our day to day experience is in regional ecosystems and economies, where we live, work, and play,” says Kelly Cerialo, co-chair of the CABR advisory committee and Assistant Professor at Paul Smith’s College.  “Confronting global environmental challenges necessitates international cooperation, but action in our home watersheds and biospheres proves what’s possible.”

Each biosphere reserve is meant to fulfill three basic functions, including the conservation of our landscapes and biodiversity, development of economies that are culturally and ecologically sustainable, and support of biosphere research and education.  The international coordinating council of the UN MAB Programme met earlier this year and added 18 new biosphere reserves to the growing international network.  In contrast, the United States recently withdrew 17 sites.  CABR is one of thirty US sites remaining.

“CABR is one of the largest biosphere reserves in the US network, with a long history of environmental stewardship with significant benefits to our economy and communities,” says Brian Houseal, co-chair of CABR and former director of the College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s Adirondack Ecological Center. “Economy and ecology need not be at odds, and our region can both share our experiences and learn from others in a global network of biosphere reserves.”

The October 11th meeting is from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm at the University of Vermont’s George D. Aiken Center, and is sponsored by the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, the Lake Champlain Basin Program, Paul Smith’s College, Gund Institute for Environment, UVM Environmental Program, Leadership for the Ecozoic Partnership, and the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry.  

More information:

October 11th Meeting Agenda

Map of the Champlain Adirondack Biosphere Reserve

Contact Kelly Cerialo at kcerialo@paulsmiths.edu or Jon Erickson at jon.erickson@uvm.edu (802-881-1901).

 

Source: UVM News

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Tell History, Make History

While nearly half the population of Bolivia identifies as Indigenous or of native descent, it took the country nearly 200 years to elect its first Indigenous president, Evo Morales. The leftist, socialist leader—who has focused on empowering marginalized sectors of society and reducing poverty and the influences of big business and the U.S.—appears poised to garner the next “first” of his tenure on October 20, when he will likely win an unprecedented fourth term in office after nearly 14 years at the helm.

So, how exactly does a rural Aymara farm boy grow to become Bolivia’s longest-serving president and usher in a new era of policies and respect for the Indigenous way? Benjamin Dangl, a lecturer of public communication in UVM’s Department of Community Development and Applied Economics and a longtime journalist in Latin America, argues that it took 500 years, decolonization, and a grassroots restoration of Indigenous nationalism—along with some street protests and bravery—to pave the way for Evo Morales. Dangl connects these dots in his new book “The Five Hundred Year Rebellion: Indigenous Movements and the Decolonization of History in Bolivia,” and offers today’s grassroots dissidents a glimmer of hope and guidance toward effective change.

Benjamin Dangl is a lecturer of public communication in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, a longtime journalist in Latin America and author of new book, “The Five Hundred Year Rebellion: Indigenous Movements and the Decolonization of History in Bolivia.”

While covering Bolivia in the early 2000s, Dangl had a front row seat to the political unrest that erupted in the capital city La Paz and beyond. Decades of growing tension between Indigenous Bolivians and a series of repressive governments came to a head over the privatization of the country’s natural gas supply and its exploitative sales to the U.S. “It was a time of revolution,” Dangl says. He recalls protestors using bonfires to communicate between groups, barricading the roads to and from La Paz, calling for control and sovereignty over their lands and natural resources, and invoking the 18th century Indigenous rebel Túpac Katari. Ultimately, the turmoil would end with Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism party on top in 2006.

“How did we get to this moment historically? Where did these narratives of economic liberation, of decolonization come from? Who is sustaining these narratives? With my book, I look at how activists used oral history as a way of rescuing and maintaining leaders and histories from oblivion,” Dangl says.

Dangl uses his experience during the gas crisis in relation to the rebel Túpac Katari as an example. While Katari is widely regarded as an apostle-like historical figure by Indigenous Bolivians today, Dangl says the history books all but glossed over his story. The Aymara rebel orchestrated a 6-month siege on Spanish colonists of La Paz in 1781 with some 40,000 Indigenous troops. They blocked the road in and out of La Paz and coordinated strategies using fire signals as they fought for their land and sovereignty. (Sound familiar?) Ultimately, Spanish reinforcements arrived and ended the siege, captured Katari and executed him by quartering his body by the limbs. Just before his execution, Katari is noted to have said “I will return as millions.”

Dangl explains that the oral storytelling of Katari’s rebellion not only kept that piece of history alive for centuries, but has inspired and reinvigorated Indigenous Bolivians under the same oppression since then. “Those kinds of stories, connecting the dots of resistance across centuries, is what so many activists did,” he says. It’s worth noting that in 2013, Bolivia launched its first satellite into orbit, which they named Túpac Katari 1.

In his research for the book, Dangl worked closely with a group of oral historians and scholars known as the Andean Oral History Workshop (THOA), who preserve, revive, and collect histories of Indigenous resistance and grassroots activism from town elders across Bolivia. Collaborating with elders, they redistribute the histories and promote Indigenous movements to wider audiences via pamphlets and radio. By relying on oral histories, the THOA discovered countless other stories and heroes that didn’t quite make it into the history books like Katari, but nonetheless played a pivotal role in sustaining generations of Indigenous activism. While working with the THOA, Dangl even had the opportunity to meet a 96-year-old man who was the son of a prominent, yet largely unknown, Katari-esque Indigenous activist, and collected stories about his father’s work.

Old man gestures as he tells a story.

Gregorio Barco Guarachi, the 96-year-old son of prominent Indigenous activist Santos Marka T’ula, welcomes Dangl into his home in El Alto, Bolivia, to share stories about his father. (Photo: Benjamin Dangl)

“A lot of the people I interviewed said ‘We’ve been struggling since the arrival of the Spanish. We’ve been struggling for 500 years, since 1492.’ The title of the book speaks to the continuity of the struggle, to say this isn’t something that just started,” Dangl says. While he doesn’t suggest that Morales and today’s voters are the literal return of Katari by the millions, he does contend that the president has elevated the 500-year history shared by Indigenous Bolivians and is a product of their sustained grassroots traditions.

In the struggles ahead for organizers, justice leaders and other activists who may already feel that they’re fighting an uphill battle—“people who might feel disenchanted, marginalized, alone, disconnected from the history of their movement”—Dangl says the past is a good place to explore the future. “Look back and see how it’s been done. What this book shows is that history can be a powerful tool for activists, and Bolivia is a great resource to learn from.”

Source: UVM News

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The North Pole Was Here

After more than three decades writing about human-driven climate change and wider sustainability issues, former New York Times journalist Andrew Revkin has started building an initiative at Columbia University’s Earth Institute testing ways to make information matter on a fast-forward, noisy planet.

He’ll speak about his quest for communication impact “from the melting North Pole to the overheated media climate,” he says, at the University of Vermont’s Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building, on Friday, October 25, at noon. The talk is free and open to the public.

Before the talk, a group of international scientists will offer short workshops on extreme climate. These are also free and open to the public.  Pre-registration is required for the workshops (see information below). These include:

• A Journey Across (and Beneath) French Glaciers, Marie Protin, Cerege, France

• Snowmobiling Across Greenland, Erich Osterberg, Dartmouth College

• DNA Leaves Footprints in the Ocean: Climate Events Over 10,000 Years, Sara Hardardottir, GEUS, Denmark

•The Good, The Bad, and The Smelly: Fieldwork in Antarctica, Drew Christ, University of Vermont

• Windy Hiking and Heavy Rocks, Becca Vanderleest, University of Connecticut

• Recreating Vanished Glaciers, Chris Halsted, University of Vermont

• Animated Ice Sheets, Benjamin Keisling, University of Massachusetts

In Revkin’s illustrated talk, including a song or two from his musical side, the prize-winning journalist will lay out his learning journey so far and his call to action for anyone interested in being the signal amid the noise. He’ll describe how storytelling still matters, but shaping constructive conversations may matter more, how top-down governance still matters, but community-up solutions hold the key.

The seven extreme climate workshops will be offered from 10:40-11:55 am.  Check in at 10:30am in Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building.

More information and registration forms are available here:

http://www.uvm.edu/~pbierman/classes/climate/fall_2019/workshop/

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Andrew Revkin’s talk and the workshops are sponsored by the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute for Environment, Geology Department, Provost’s Office, College of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Vice President for Research and also by Columbia University.

Source: UVM News

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Helping Prepare Students for What’s Next

In his long career as senior staffer for six different members of Congress and other public service roles in the nation’s capital, Khalil Munir ’74 has had ample opportunity to see the skills that new college graduates bring (or sometimes don’t bring) to a job interview. As a UVM alumnus, he’s leading an effort to help today’s Vermont graduates enter the “real world” well prepared to step into a career.

In particular, Munir, a member of the Alumni Association Board Executive Committee, is helping draw together affinity groups of students and alumni of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, non-traditional students, and military veterans, among others. A Mosaic Center Community Celebration on campus in March was one part of the effort, creating opportunities for career networking and honing job interview skills. “Those four years of college aren’t a picnic,” Munir says, sounding like both the seasoned professional and father of two that he is. “Students really should be priming themselves for the four years after, developing a vision for what it is they want to do, and creating a plan for how they’re going to get there.”

At his own UVM graduation, forty-five years ago, Khalil Munir would not have envisioned himself as an alumnus deeply involved with his alma mater. (Fellow alumni may remember him as Tyrone Minor; Munir legally changed his birthname in 1978.) He reflects that when he began college at UVM on an athletic scholarship, he was driven by a “basketball-centric” mindset. Vermont was then a member of the Yankee Conference along with UMass, where NBA legend Julius Erving played college ball in the early seventies. “I had visions of becoming the second Dr. J,” Munir says. He played very well his freshman year, but his sophomore season was derailed by a serious knee injury. A new coach would cut Munir from the squad the next fall, saying he lacked mobility. Munir believes the move had more to do with being a strong, rebellious voice on the team; he had initiated a petition that resulted in the previous coach losing his job.

Looking back, Munir says, “My greatest regret in life is that I started that wrong-headed petition. Probably twelve of the fourteen guys on the team signed on to it, but I didn’t have an appreciation of ruining the career and the livelihood of someone who loved the game and had been responsible for giving me a shot to play at UVM. I could have and should have done better.”

But the circumstance, “shattered” by losing his identity as a varsity athlete, pushed Munir to redefine himself and reset his course. He doubled down on his studies in economics, committed to prove to his fellow students and professors that he was more than a basketball player. His career in Washington, D.C., would begin in 1978 when he was selected for the inaugural class of the Presidential Management Fellows Program.

A turning point in Munir’s relationship with his alma mater came five years ago, when he was invited to campus to introduce then president Tom Sullivan at an event. As he became reacquainted with UVM, Munir saw a much more diverse university than the place where he felt cultural isolation as one of very few students of color in the early seventies. But he also saw opportunity to build connection within and among underrepresented populations. “That was the awakening for me,” he says. “Because it forced me to reconcile what I had garnered from being at UVM, what I contributed, and, most importantly, what I can give back.”

Reflecting on his own time at UVM and what he hopes to share with today’s students, Munir says, “Attending a racial majority university prepared me to comfortably and effectively navigate social, professional, and educational situations as a distinct minority—i.e. tall and African American. It’s essential for Mosaic community members to develop positive self-esteem, intellectual competency, job readiness skills, and the confidence to take on the challenges presented to them professionally, culturally, and socially.”

Source: UVM News

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The Upset: A Look Back at UVM’s First-Ever March Madness Win

This weekend, UVM will retire the jerseys of two Catamount legends, T.J. Sorrentine (No. 11) and Taylor Coppenrath (No. 22). As these numbers head for the rafters, we take a look back at the 2005 graduates’ senior season, and the team’s landmark win over No. 4 seed Syracuse in the NCAA Tournament.

John Becker remembers exactly where he was when Vermont stunned national powerhouse Syracuse in overtime in the opening days of the 2005 NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The current UVM coach was an assistant at Division III Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and like many others, had taken that Friday off to monitor the early rounds.

“I had been home watching games all day and was standing in front of my television, rooting for Vermont,” Becker says. “I think most of the country was doing the same thing because Vermont was such a neat story. I had no idea I would be the head coach there one day.”

Becker is far from alone in recalling with crystal clarity the defining moment in UVM men’s basketball history. That victory—as unexpected as it was exhilarating—still resonates throughout the state. It not only marked the end of an era, but also established the program as more than a one-hit wonder. In the years since, Vermont has used the exposure and momentum created by that history-making win as the foundation for one of the most successful mid-level programs in the country.

“That game meant so much to so many people and that’s something I’m reminded of every day,” says Tom Brennan (below), the man who led the Catamounts to tournament glory in the final season of his UVM coaching career. “But the thing is, do you think for a minute that if we hadn’t stayed good after I left, people would still be talking about Syracuse?”

Brennan led Vermont for nineteen years, the first three of which produced a cumulative record of 14-68. But beginning with the freshman class of 2000-01 that became seniors in 2004-2005, Vermont went 89-26, winning at least twenty-one games each season and reaching the NCAA tournament for the first two times in school history.

“It’s really hard at the mid-major level to be good consistently—it tends to be cyclical,” Becker says. “But we have a program that has maintained a high level and it all really started with Syracuse. That success has helped us sustain something players want to be a part of.”

Here is a look back at the weekend in Worcester, Massachusetts, that will stand as the benchmark of Vermont basketball for ages.

The Back Story

The high expectations for 2004-05 were jolted in early November when Brennan announced his plans to retire at season’s end. Vermont was coming off back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances but how would the senior-laden Catamounts react to this unsettling news?

It was never an issue. UVM began by giving preseason No. 1-ranked Kansas all it could handle in a 68-61 loss to the Jayhawks in Lawrence. The Catamounts also lost at eventual national champion North Carolina, but cruised through America East play with a 16-2 record before sweeping three games in the conference tournament. An 80-57 beat down of Northeastern in the finals sent Vermont to the NCAAs for a third consecutive year with an overall mark of 25-7.

Taylor Coppenrath plays defense

These Catamounts were a lovable bunch, led by swashbuckling point guard T.J. Sorrentine and native son Taylor Coppenrath (above), from Barnet, in the low post. They formed the top-scoring tandem in Division I, teaming to average forty-four points a game.

Canadian David Hehn at off-guard and Germain Mopa Njila, an athletic small forward from Cameroon, gave Vermont two more veterans. The four seniors came into the Syracuse showdown with more than 400 career starts. Sophomore forward Martin Klimes from the Czech Republic, who played in thirty games as a freshman, completed the starting five.

“We had a lot of things going for us,” says Hehn. “For the seniors, whether it was stars like T.J. and Taylor, or guys like me and Germain, we all knew our roles and we were really prepared.”

The Cats had talent. They had the maturity that comes with starting four seniors. And their tournament experience would not leave them awestruck by the NCAA stage.

As fans waited for the awarding of seeds for 2005, there was buzz that UVM’s resume was strong enough (its rating percentage index used to evaluate teams was in the top thirty) to vault is as high as an eleventh seed. But Vermont placed thirteenth, a result that led author and veteran Washington Post sports columnist John Feinstein to label the Catamounts as the most under-seeded team in the entire field.

“I had seen Vermont play a couple of times that year and quite a bit over a three-year period,” says Feinstein. “They had the numbers and they passed the eye test. But the team that really got screwed was Syracuse because they wound up playing a team that was much better than a number thirteen seed.”

Catamounts celebrate on court

The Game

The good news for Vermont was it was sent to Worcester, Massachusetts, for the opening weekend after being banished to Salt Lake City and Buffalo in its first two NCAA appearances. The bad news was the Cats drew fourth seed Syracuse, a perennial top ten program just two years removed from a national championship. The Orange were led by All-Americans Gerry McNamara and Hakim Warrick and came in on a roll after winning the Big East Conference tournament.

“People thought they could be a Final Four team and they played that 2-3 zone that gave everybody trouble,” Brennan says. “But after we found out the seeds I got a call from Tark (former UNLV Coach Jerry Tarkanian), and I’d talked to him maybe once in ten years. He said don’t get flummoxed, you can beat that zone. It looks better than it is.”

With a crowd of more than 13,000 filling the DCU Center, Vermont staggered to a 23-19 halftime deficit after shooting 27 percent from the field and hitting only one of nine three-point attempts.

But the Catamounts proved to themselves they could compete with Orange. In the second half, a dogged man-to-man defense that produced twenty-four turnovers, and a work-the-clock offense enabled UVM to take a five-point lead with just under six minutes remaining.

“We were having a hard time getting shots, but our kids were playing so hard defensively and we just kept hanging around,” Brennan says. “Syracuse pressed us and we coughed it up a few times, but they went back in the zone and we were able to get our legs under us again.”

Tied at 51-51, Vermont appeared to have won in regulation when Mopa Njila, who scored a career-best twenty points on 9-of-10 shooting, hit a baseline drive with three seconds left. But official Timothy Cofer ruled Mopa Njila (above at center) had stepped on the baseline and the game headed to overtime.

The Shot

It remains one of the signature moments in NCAA tournament history; one replayed every year when March Madness begins its annual dance.

Leading 56-55 with just over a minute remaining in overtime, Sorrentine had the ball across midcourt as Brennan yelled to his captain to run “Red,” an end-of-the-shot-clock play where Sorrentine tries to find Coppenrath in the lane. Sorrentine motioned to his coach that he had things under control.

Sorrentine shouted “run the play” with no intention of running anything.

“In that situation, I thought if we could just get it to four points, we could win,” Sorrentine says. “But if I passed the ball I wasn’t sure I was going to get it back. I thought, ‘I’m going to shoot this ball.’”

As Syracuse defenders McNamara and Josh Pace moved higher on the perimeter, Sorrentine backed up and launched a twenty-six-foot bomb from the top of the key that swished cleanly through the net. Coppenrath still calls it “the shot from the parking lot.” To that point, Sorrentine had shot 4-for-19 for the game.

“That’s a shot every kid dreams of making, but it’s not one you practice,” he says. “I tried it again the next day at practice and air-balled it.”

Brennan loves to mention that it wasn’t the only time Sorrentine hadn’t paid attention to his coach.

“That shot changed our lives,” Brennan says. “You wouldn’t coach that shot; it was a terrible shot. But T.J. certainly had earned the right to take it, and he always believed the next one was going in.”

Sorrentine’s dagger was the fatal strike in what became UVM’s 60-57 victory. In a game in which neither side led by more than six points, the Green Mountain boys toppled the Syracuse giant.

“Talking with Tom before the game, he said they were done with this ‘it’s great to be here stuff,’” says Feinstein, who was courtside that night. “They were there to win. And I was lucky enough to be in the building to see it.”

Vermont’s magic carpet ride ended two days later when a No. 5 seed Michigan State team that would reach the Final Four methodically ground down the Catamounts, 72-61. That loss did nothing to diminish what the Catamounts had accomplished.

“The magic of that weekend has never gone away and I am as shocked about that as anything,” Brennan says. “It happened, and it was great, but it’s not the only good thing that has happened to Vermont basketball.”

 

This story originally appeared in the Spring 2015 edition of Vermont Quarterly.

Source: UVM News

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University of Vermont Establishes Patrick and Marcelle Leahy Scholars Initiative

In recognition of Senator Patrick Leahy’s decades of support for important research and teaching initiatives, the University of Vermont today unveiled a new $3.3 million fund that will pay tribute to Senator Leahy and his wife Marcelle. The new fund will benefit undergraduate, doctoral and post-doctoral students in two signature programs at the university, the UVM Honors College and the Gund Institute for Environment.

Funds for the Patrick and Marcelle Leahy Scholars Initiative were raised and will continue to grow through private philanthropy.  

“The Leahy Scholars Initiative will provide financial support and enrichment opportunities that will help us prepare students to meet the challenges that confront our state, our nation and our world,” said Suresh Garimella, UVM president. “This is a tremendously impactful way to honor Senator Leahy and the societal impact he himself has had over the last half century.”

“We are so proud of Vermont’s Land Grant university, and this ongoing investment in the future of UVM and its students honors its rich legacy,” said Senator Patrick Leahy. “To be a part of UVM’s future means so much to us, and to Vermont. We love the idea of being a part of training the next generation of climate scientists. We are inspired by the vision and determination of our students and can think of nothing better than investing in these emerging leaders.”

The Leahy Undergraduate Scholars program will support students selected from the UVM Honors College, whose members represent the top 10 percent of undergraduates admitted to the university, spanning all its colleges and schools.

The students, chosen competitively based on their academic record and engagement in community and other causes, will receive both tuition support and funding for high-impact learning opportunities, including study abroad, research, internships and community service.

The awards will be targeted to maximize students’ potential, foster innovation, build leadership skills and address need.

The Leahy Doctoral and Postdoctoral Scholars program will support doctoral and post-doctoral students engaged in activities supported by the Gund Institute for Environment, a community of 150 researchers and leaders from across UVM’s colleges and departments. The Gund Institute is also allied with 40 partner institutions in 10 countries.

Selected doctoral and post-doctoral students will receive funding for customized leadership training and real-world experience collaborating with leaders in government and business, with the goal of promoting a deep understanding of complex global environmental issues. Leahy Doctoral and Postdoctoral Scholars will conduct cross-disciplinary research on global environmental challenges with world-class mentors at UVM.

Early lead donors to the Patrick and Marcelle Leahy Scholars Initiative include the Barry and Wendy Meyer Foundation, the Roger and Victoria Sant Trust, The Boeing Company, Microsoft Corporation, the National Association of Broadcasters, The Walt Disney Company, the Joel and Carol Jankowsky Foundation and the Brightwater Fund.

”The Leahy Scholars Initiative presents a unique opportunity to create a living legacy while celebrating Senator and Mrs. Leahy as pillars of the state of Vermont,” said Shane Jacobson, president and CEO of the UVM Foundation. “Donors to date have come forward to recognize the positive effect of the Leahys on this region and the country as a whole. It has been an extraordinary honor working with benefactors to bring this vision to reality, and we invite others to join us as we seek to expand the program.”

The University of Vermont Honors College draws students from every undergraduate college and academic discipline, who live and study together, participating in cutting-edge research, engaging in innovative, creative expression, and tackling pressing societal challenges. The Honors College embodies the ideals of an interdisciplinary liberal education where learning translates into solving real-world problems.

The Gund Institute is UVM’s university-wide environmental research and policy institute, focused on sustainable agriculture, climate solutions, human health, and resilient communities. The Gund Institute accelerates collaboration among UVM scholars to understand global sustainability challenges, and builds strong partnerships to solve them with leaders in government, business, and civil society. The Institute builds on UVM’s longstanding leadership in environmental issues, and it is driving powerful integration among traditional disciplines of natural sciences, social sciences, business, health, engineering, and the humanities.

Give to the Patrick and Marcelle Leahy Scholars Initiative.

Source: UVM News

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UVM Named the #4 Top Green School

Once again, the University of Vermont ranks among the Top Green Schools, according to the Princeton Review, coming in at No. 4.

The Princeton Review’s annual guide profiles 413 colleges with strong commitments to green practices and programs, all “outstanding institutions for students seeking to study and live at a green college,” says Rob Franek, The Princeton Review’s Editor-in-Chief. The ranking looks at criteria including academic offerings and initiatives, campus policies and practices, and green-career preparation for students.

Some of the stats that propelled UVM to its No. 4 ranking include:

  • 100 percent of undergraduates are required to take courses in sustainability.
  • 28 percent of researchers are engaged in sustainability research.
  • 738 students live in UVM’s Sustainability Learning Community.
  • 20 Eco-Reps teach their fellow students about sustainability in daily life.
  • 100 percent certified renewable electricity is purchased for campus.
  • 49 percent of waste is recycled or composted.
  • 26 percent of food is Real Food (local, organic, fair trade, or humanely raised).
  • 13 campus buildings have attained LEED certification.
  • 100 percent of residence halls collect organics for composting.
  • 100 percent of used cooking oil is converted into biodiesel.
  • 0 containers of bottled water are sold on campus.

The ranking also considers student survey responses of how sustainability influences education and life on campus. As one Catamount explained, UVM brings together students with “exceptional passion for what they do, whether in the classroom or out.”

See the Top 50 Green School ranking on the Princeton Review website. 

Source: UVM News

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UVM Faculty Break Down Brexit

October 31 marks the day lawmakers in the United Kingdom (UK) were supposed to have wrapped up Brexit negotiations and formally exited the European Union (EU) once and for all. But after two missed deadlines, two resigned prime ministers and more than three years of whirlwind vagaries, no such deal has been made. In fact, Brexit’s new deadline is January 31, 2020, and the UK is currently gearing up for a December 12 snap general election. Amid the flurry of daily and even hourly updates from Parliament, it’s easy to lose sight of the original impetus of Brexit. To better understand this complicated issue and its implications, we checked in with UVM experts and faculty teaching a range of courses, from international relations and political science to business, in which Brexit’s unpredictable developments regularly make their way into class discussions. Here are their takes on Brexit—and a glimpse at what it’s like teaching global events in real-time.

  

  • Let’s get back to the Brexit basics: What is the European Union, anyway?

Richard Sicotte, professor of economics: “The European Union is a trade agreement that allows free trade, free movement of labor and free movement of financial capital between all the members. Most economists will say, generally, that these types of agreements are beneficial, but they are not going to benefit everyone. They never will.”

Bradley Bauerly, lecturer of political science: “The initial idea of the European Union emerged with an idea of liberal peace theory, in which countries that trade with each other are less likely to go to war. They wanted to set up this whole economic trade bloc that would help reduce tensions. The EU was supposed to guard against war internally; it was also supposed to bring countries together in this cosmopolitan utopian idea. So that’s what drove people to support the EU.”

  • Why are the British so unhappy in the EU? What do they hope to gain with Brexit?

Bauerly: “A lot of what we hear in the media is that those that voted to leave the European Union are mostly nationalist, anti-immigrant and/or racist factions. Data is there and shows that was part of what motivated people, but there’s also data to show that the areas that experienced trade shocks, or loss of jobs due to increased trade, were places where people were more likely to vote for Brexit.”

Richard Vanden Bergh, professor of strategy: “There’s a general concern among some British that the EU has control over a lot of important regulations, and that the EU isn’t directly accountable to the British in terms of the effects of those regulations. From an economic perspective, I think one tension is that smaller entrepreneurial firms have their hands tied by the EU regulations, and that entrepreneurial activity may increase under Brexit. However, a big-picture benefit to the British is that they have a very open trading bloc that allows those small entrepreneurial firms to have relatively frictionless trade. If they Brexit, they may lose the benefit of frictionless trade, but they may gain the benefit of increasedentrepreneurial activity.”

Paul Deslandes, professor and chair, history department: “I think people who voted in favor of Brexit thought they were regaining autonomy for Britain. They were upset with the regulations, but also with what was perceived as an imposition of European laws that were hindering the expression of Britishness or the economic development of Britain.”

  •  Is this phenomenon isolated to the UK and Europe, or is it happening around the world?

Bauerly: “It’s all happened before, not in the exact same way, but yes. I think this authoritarian, nationalist rise is something that’s occurring around the world. I would make the case that it’s linked to increased global trade and the way that global economy, particularly financial flows, discipline states and limit their ability to respond to domestic populations. People start to see the political system as broken because what they want isn’t what the system is doing; what it’s actually doing is what the global economy needs and not necessarily what the people need. They feel left behind by their politicians for that.”

  • Ok, so is the UK onto something? Does the EU need reform or should we expect to see more members leave?

Susanna Schrafstetter, professor of history: “The EU achieved what it set out to do originally. We haven’t had a war in Europe for a long period of time and, in European history, that’s not something to be taken for granted. It has taken aside the Balkan Wars and the recent wars in Ukraine and Russia, and prevented Yugoslavia from falling apart. But while the Union achieved a lot, you can say it’s kind of stalled in the last decade or so. The key question is whether the project will move forward with all its members, evolve into a federal state—it would have the true powers of a major player on the world stage—or will we see it crumble further?”

Bauerly: “Deteriorating international cooperation between big powers generally means that there’s going to be less structure in place that everybody benefits from. When there’s a big power in place, they get to set the rules for everybody to fall in line. But when that empire or that hegemon is declining and states are competing with different sets of rules, that creates chaos. States tend to then become more inwardly focused on what they can get against other states rather than how they’re going to support an international community. I think you see that within Europe. Individual states increasingly view other European states as their competitors instead of working together.”

  • Why is it taking so long to negotiate a deal—what’s the hold up?

Deslandes: “It was always intended to take some time. I think the biggest issue has been around Northern Ireland’s open border with Ireland, established by the Good Friday Agreement. In order to keep a free and open border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, they will need to retain elements of EU law and EU customs, and pro-Brexit people see that as a tether on the UK to the EU.”

  • Where does Brexit stand now on that front?

Sicotte: “The current proposal is to erect a customs check at the Northern Irish ports, but no checks at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This was an innovative solution. It will be odd, though, to have goods be checked before they cross the border between two different parts of the UK—England and Northern Ireland. This would be the equivalent of having a customs check on the New Hampshire-Vermont border and having no customs check at the Vermont-Quebec border. Very odd. If this plan becomes law, and is carried out, the future tariff rates between the UK and the EU are still up in the air, but are likely to be pretty close to free trade. Some recent estimates I saw put the damage to the UK economy at around 5 percent of GDP, but this might not happen right away.”

  • There’s been a lot of turnover in Parliament since the referendum was called in 2016, including three prime ministers, and now a snap election on December 12. What should we make of this? Is this typical for the UK?

Bauerly: “They have something called a vote of no confidence, which means they don’t have confidence in the coalition to represent the interests of the people or even for the coalition to reproduce itself. In this system, no confidence is sort of a way to override and change paths in the middle as they go along rather than having to wait for the next election.” 

Deslandes: “No, it’s not entirely normal. The British parliamentary system requires that an election be held every five years, but there is no fixed term duration. In the event, right now, of Boris Johnson wanting to call an election, his hope is that he will get a more solid majority of conservative, pro-Brexit Members of Parliament, thereby making it easier for him to actually get the deal that’s been approved by the EU through Parliament.” 

  • In that case, can they call for a new referendum?

Deslandes: “In large part, people are reluctant to it and I think it’s a perception issue. It’s very difficult to do that because they don’t want to go back on a promise, essentially, to hold a referendum and adhere to the decisions of that referendum. People worry about what the political costs might be. But, there are more and more people coming around to the idea of a second referendum, the argument being we have more information now and understand better the economic, bureaucratic and structural implications. I think referenda are not the best way to make decisions about the future of government. I tend to be of the opinion that the way democracy works is not through these direct populist referenda approaches, but actually through elected officials who are paid and who have the time to explore the intricacies of issues and not make decisions for the country based on emotion, gut responses, or that are ill-informed.”

Bauerly: “There may not be a need for a second referendum because potentially they could do a Brexit without actually changing very much, and that’s the ‘soft Brexit’ approach. They could negotiate a lot of the same things that they have now—they’re going to lose some things, but it could be similar.”

  •  What does a successful Brexit look like?

Vanden Bergh: “This will be difficult. Britain must minimize the downside loss of open trade with the EU by negotiating good trade agreements. People point to Norway or Switzerland and the trade terms those countries have with the EU. If Britain can replicate those agreements, there’s no reason to think the UK economy will not be fine. Switzerland is one of the most vibrant economies in the world and it’s not formally part of the EU.Switzerland’s experience suggests that a country in Europe does not have to be a formal member state of the EU to have a vibrant economy.”

Bauerly: “That’s a tough one. The best possible thing that Brexit does is show the complications in the European Union and perhaps pushes that in some way, either to go back on that project or rework the structures to be more responsive to different democracies.”

  • Should we expect the U.S. to feel any impacts of Brexit? 

Sicotte: “This is complicated. A lot of people view the UK’s relationship with the United States as unique. President Trump and others say they want to negotiate a free trade agreement, but I don’t think anybody in their right mind would expect that to be resolved even within a year. I think that’s wildly optimistic. There’s going to be a lot of issues—Europeans, for example, have rules against U.S. beef with regard to genetically modified organisms, which we consume constantly in the United States, but abroad they don’t. I don’t think the UK is all of the sudden going to change that. They’re still going to have their own rules that our negotiators are going to be upset about, and our negotiations are likely to have a number of their own. They won’t be able to just pop out a free trade agreement between two very large economies. It’s very hard—it’s possible, but it takes time.”

  • How does Brexit fit into or challenge your classroom lessons? Is it offering any new insight?

Sicotte: “My class is about migration, trade and finance, so we discuss Brexit as an example in all regards. Migration was one of the motivations of Brexit; it’s all about trade; and London, for a very long time—hundreds of years—has been a global financial center. Brexit touches all three of those areas. In practice, though, the making of economic policy is not some benevolent actor trying to make everybody happy. It’s a really messy political process with a lot of biases. I think that anyone who fears the influence of economists and economic policy can see now that the influence is not that great. We’re so far from the technocracy, otherwise, Brexit would never have happened.”

 

Faculty responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Source: UVM News

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Secrets Under the Ice

The real mission was to build a top-secret missile base. But, in the early 1960’s, the U.S. Army publically trumpeted the creation of a scientific station called Camp Century—a “city under the ice” they called it, in northwestern Greenland, far north of the Arctic Circle. A series of twenty-one horizontal tunnels spidering through the snow—complete with movie theater, portable nuclear reactor, nearly two hundred residents, hot showers, a chapel, and chemistry labs—all, they said, in aid of research.

As part of the effort, a team led by US glacier scientist Chester Langway drilled a 4,560-foot-deep vertical core down through the ice. Each section of ice that came up was packaged and stored, frozen. When the drill finally hit dirt, the scientists worked it down for twelve more feet through mud and rock. Then they stopped.

For decades, this bottom-most layer of ice and rock from the core was lost in the bottom of a freezer in Denmark. Last year, it was rediscovered—in some cookie jars.

Last week, more than thirty scientists from around the world gathered at the University of Vermont for four days to decide what this one-of-a-kind sample of silty ice and frozen sediment might tell us—and how best to study it.

Fast melt

UVM geologist Paul Bierman, who led the workshop, thinks it may be “the key, the Rosetta Stone,” he said, to understanding how durable the ice on Greenland was during past warmings and coolings. And this, in turn, can give scientists a much clearer sense of how fast Greenland might melt in the warming world of the future. Since some twenty feet of sea-level rise is bound up in that vast ice sheet, the answer to this question is of dramatic global consequence. 

The preliminary results that Bierman and two scientists in his lab—Drew Christ and Lee Corbett—presented at the workshop are troubling. “We should be hoping that this dirt has been covered for two or three million years or more,” he said. Instead, the team’s analysis of the sediment, with support from the National Science Foundation, suggests the massive ice sheet over Greenland must have been greatly reduced within the past million years or less—during a warm time when the Earth’s climate was similar to today.

“This is tentative. We did most of this work in just the last few days, going like mad to be ready for the workshop,” Bierman said, “but, if this first look holds true, this is big-time bad news.” A Greenland that melted off recently, when the past was like today, is a Greenland that is likely to quickly melt again.

Worming in the ice

To recreate the Camp Century ice core now would cost tens of millions of dollars. To understand how the bottom few yards of it was lost—the rediscovery of which attracted scientists from France, Denmark, China, Belgium, Canada, and ten U.S. universities to come to UVM to discuss—requires a trip back to a Cold War.

All the scientific effort at Camp Century was cover for the super-secretive Project Iceworm. Even the Danish government that controlled Greenland, didn’t know that the camp’s actual purpose was to build a system of tunnels more than 2,000 miles long to hide 600 nuclear missiles under the ice close to the Soviet Union.

Project Iceworm failed. The vast ice sheet, thought to be an unmovable mass, was shifting and flowing much faster than expected. The tunnels were deforming and a rapidly accumulating overburden of snow threatened to make them collapse. Camp Century was abandoned by 1967.

Lost core

But the ice core lived on. Initially, it was shipped to an Army laboratory in New Hampshire. Then, in the early 1970s, it was moved to a freezer at the University at Buffalo where Chester Langway was now a professor. There, he and others studied its many layers. The temperature record they extracted from this ice helped re-write our understanding of the ancient past, how climates could shift, ice ages come and go.

“With all the scientific focus on the ice,” said Bierman—a professor in UVM’s Geology Department, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, and fellow in the Gund Institute for Environment—“the mud and rock that Langway’s team brought up from the frozen depths were forgotten.” And by 1993, the Camp Century core itself had been mostly forgotten, pushed aside by the excitement over two other even-deeper ice cores—GISP2 and GRIP—that drilled down two miles in the center of Greenland.

“Chet Langway was so fed up,” recalled Jørgen Peder Steffensen who traveled from Denmark to attend the UVM workshop and is professor and curator of the ice core repository at University of Copenhagen. No scientists were writing to him to request samples from the Camp Century core or seemed interested in what its ice might reveal.  “He said, ‘you come over here and get the ice,” Steffensen recalled, “otherwise it goes into Lake Erie.” Soon, crates and shipping containers full of ice, including the Camp Century cores, were on their way back across the Atlantic to Denmark.

Technicians in Copenhagen repacked and relabeled the boxes of ice from Langway. Among the thousands of containers, “some were oddly labeled ‘Camp Century sub-ice,’” Steffensen said. “I never thought about what was in those two boxes.”

From the cookie jar

Then, at the end of last year, he and Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, an esteemed glaciologist at the University of Copenhagen, were going through the extensive collections of ice cores—from Antarctica, Greenland and other places—stored at the university, preparing them for a move to a new freezer.

Steffensen again spotted the strange “sub-ice” boxes—and opened them up.  They were full of glass jars. “Well, when you see a lot of cookie jars, you think: who the hell put this in here? No, I didn’t know what to make of it. But once we got it out, we picked it up to see these dirty lumps, and I said: what is this now?” Steffensen said. “And all of a sudden it dawned on us: Oh s–t, this is the sediment underneath it. The ‘sub-ice’ is because it’s below the ice. Whoa.”

soil sample from greenland

They knew that what was an overlooked bit of dirt collected in the 1960s was a treasure for scientists with modern techniques for dating the last exposure of sediment. So they contacted Paul Bierman at UVM and Joerg Schaefer at Columbia University—both experts on new techniques for measuring the ages of ancient landscapes. They soon were on a plane to see for themselves what was in the Danes’ freezer.

Former forest?

This summer, with less than two pounds of material—a sample from the top and the bottom of the whole twelve-foot column —Bierman, Christ and Corbett set to work in UVM’s Community Cosmogenic Facility, an NSF-supported public laboratory. When they looked under the microscope they were amazed. Instead of just rock and sand, they saw bits of moss and wood. This meant that the ice at Camp Century was probably frozen in place on top of soil and hadn’t scraped off feet of bedrock like many moving glaciers and ice sheets do.

Bierman is an expert at analyzing tiny amounts of radioactive isotopes that form in quartz when soil and rock is exposed to the sky, bombarded by cosmic rays.  The longer the exposure, the more isotopes form. In quartz, aluminum-26 forms seven times faster than beryllium-10—and it decays twice as fast.  The ratio between the aluminum and beryllium isotopes serves as a kind of clock to let the scientists measure how long it has been since a landscape was not covered with ice. 

But these isotope data can be hard to interpret because it’s not necessarily clear that the material being tested is from the top-most layer of land; a glacier could scrape away many feet of soil and rock. But having organic matter—probably remnants from a time when Greenland was covered with forest—gave them confidence that they could put a limit on the maximum time the dirt had been buried under ice.

Sample sharing

The UVM scientists knew they had a treasure, and soon Christ was shipping out bits of it to other scientists around the world. These colleagues went hunting for oxygen isotopes to measure temperature; electrons that reveal when the samples were last exposed to sunlight; plant waxes, freeze-dried plants, the age and chemistry of rock chips and sand grains in the long-frozen soil—and a host of other clues about how long ago the land under Camp Century was last ice-free and what the climate and landscape was like.

At the end of October, all the scientists (plus one reporter from Science Magazine) came to Vermont to talk about the first modern data gathered from the core collected there more than half a century ago, and what else they could learn from its bottom stretch of soil and rock. Over posters and technical talks—and with support from UVM’s geology department, Gund Institute for Environment, College of Arts and Sciences, the offices of the provost and the vice president for research, as well as Columbia University, “plus lots and lots of coffee,” Bierman said—they pondered what it might mean.

The UVM team’s data, compiled literally the evening before the workshop began, fell in line with results from the one other deep core to ever reach the bedrock of Greenland, GISP2. Both indicate that the ice where they were drilled can’t be older than one million years.  Another scientist, Tammy Rittenour, geologist at Utah State University, Skyped into the workshop to report brand-new luminescence data from the material Drew Christ had sent her. It suggested Camp Century may have been ice-free as recently as 400,000 year ago.

For most of the Earth’s history, the planet has been free of ice. During these long greenhouse periods, tropical forests sometimes extended north, even close to the North Pole, and the oceans were hundreds of feet higher than today. Paul Bierman and the many scientists gathered at UVM would like to avoid this happening again in the coming centuries—and to find out what a unique sample of mud in old cookie jars can show about what it took in the past to melt the ice on Greenland and cover it with trees.

Source: UVM News