The application is now available for the Summer 2023 REU on Sustainable Land and Water Resources. Read about this year’s projects here and apply here.

Yusuf Khairulhuda, a University of Minnesota student majoring in Product Design/User Experience was an IonE Sustainability Intern for the 2021 REU on Sustainable Land and Water Resources. Besides his work providing our participants with a great experience this summer, Yusuf created this story map about the REU SLAWR 2021.

REU SLAWR 2021 created by Yusuf Khairulhuda

The application is now available for the Summer 2022 REU on Sustainable Land and Water Resources. Read about this year’s projects here and apply here.

All the participants did amazing work! Visit their team pages to see abstracts, posters, and story maps.

Chris is creating an vacuum chamber for working with oxygen sensitive materials. In reality, he’s holding a Kleenex box. The chamber uses nitrogen to ensure there’s no oxygen in the chamber. Team Stream – manoomin – toured Cara Santelli’s lab in Snyder Hall at the Univ. of Minnesota. Snyder is where Team Stream prepared geo chemistry materials for their first field day on June, 14th 2021.

https://www.globalonenessproject.org/library/essays/serviceberry-economy-abundance

The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance

I’m finding out a virtual REU can be pretty fun!

Continue reading →

Check out this article about the REU, which was written by Emily Geraghty Ward, myself, Nievita Bueno Watts and Antony Berthelote.

GSA TODAY

https://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/groundwork/G366GW/article.htm

Check out the new paper that was published featuring work that was started in the REU SLAWR 2 years ago:  http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11270-017-3256-1

Congratulations Scott Beauvais and Francisca Tolledo-Cossu and their mentors Makoto Higashino, Andy Erickson, and Professor Heinz Stefan!

Hey check it out!  NSF is featuring Team SPAW on the NSF Facebook Site!  Way to go and looking good!

https://www.facebook.com/US.NSF/

We had a field trip up to UMD today.  I was going to say great, but despite the great company there was the steady drizzle and the dense fog and the 40 degree temps!

Great to meet up with Nate Johnson and Sophie and see where Team Zaaga’igan will live this summer.

Here’s some pics:

Gabriela making the robotic fish swim at SAFL

No really, we’re not cold…the lighthouse on Lake Superior.

Eating burritos at that Russian place with Nate and Sophie.

On our tour of campus we walked down the “Walk of Scholars” and saw the name Efi Foufoula Georgiou.  Also went to the library and Coffman Union.  REU students got UCards and Starbucks for the efforts.

First morning on campus and Team Stream and Team Zaaga’igan walked over to the St. Anthony Falls Lab.

Students are invited to apply to the REU on Sustainable Land and Water Resources, which introduces undergraduate students from 2-year and 4-year colleges and universities to the key elements of research on land and water resources that are essential to improving management practices, with a focus on Community-Based Participatory Research and diverse interdisciplinary research teams. Students are advised by a multi-institutional and multidisciplinary team of researchers associated with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (Flathead Reservation, Montana) (CSKT), the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (FDL), Salish Kootenai College (SKC), the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED), St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, University of Minnesota (UMN), and the National Lacustrine Core Facility (LacCore), Limnological Research Center, UMN. It is anticipated that additional researchers from UMN and other institutions will be recruited as new projects are defined.
Participants are involved in ongoing and new community-defined projects that integrate Earth-surface dynamics, geology, civil engineering, ecology, biology, limnology, paleolimnology, and hydrology principles and techniques required for sustainable land and water management and restoration while using an interdisciplinary team-oriented approach that merges scientific and indigenous research methodologies. Students from 2- and 4-year institutions are encouraged to discover the entire range of academic and career options from management practitioner to Ph.D.-level researcher, and how these career possibilities relate to students’ personal, academic, and career goals. In partnership with two tribal reservations, we also introduce students to land and water management challenges and career opportunities on tribal reservations. Native American students are specifically invited to apply to this REU, but the REU teams continues to be diverse in ethnicity, age, life experience, regionality, and science discipline. The REU provides a CBPR research experience in multidisciplinary environmental protection that is both engaging and challenging. Key elements that promote these outcomes are: 1) a unique mentoring approach that fosters the “whole student,” with individual attention to academic, social, cultural, personal and financial circumstances; 2) a combination of experimental, field, and computational methods; 3) close interaction with faculty who are leaders in their field on cutting-edge research projects; 4) embedding student research within active ongoing research projects at a major research institution and in CBPR on tribal reservations; and 5) the intrinsic appeal of contributing to research on subjects of obvious local and national relevance in the stunning natural settings of Montana and northern Minnesota. Each part of the REU, from orientation, to carrying out the project, to the All-Team gathering in Minneapolis at the end of the program, is carefully designed to maximize the participants’ experience.

Check it out…I’ve been interviewed in AGU’s EOS about my new book “Future Earth”.

Future Earth_ Advancing Civic Understanding of the Anthropocene – Schultz – 2014 – Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union – Wiley Online Library

listening and learning

Tony and Shawnna assured me that this had to be one of the longest, most boring drives ever.  Guess they never drove from Kansas City to Denver before? And Tony–Those snow-covered peaks? Topography only 1.5 hours from Billings.

Finally arrived in Montana and Shawnna Berthelote made us a great dinner of sourdough pancakes and all the fixin’s!

Great to meet the team and now we are working on the blog.  Expect lots of posts from Team SPAW in the future!

Welcome to all the participants and mentors in the REU on Sustainable Land and Water Resources!

Today was an excellent day on the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa reservation.  All the students gathered from Team Stream and Team Zaaga’igan and traveled ‘up north’.  Reggie DeFoe gave us a wonderful tour of the FDL Resource Management building.  The highlight of the day was a great talk around the campfire as we roasted sausages and cooked fajitas in foil packs.

It is so exciting to start a new summer!

Hi–For those applying for the 2014 REU on Sustainable Land and Water Resources…

OUR FAX NUMBER HAS CHANGED:

612-624-4398

Today the Montana and Minnesota team met early in the morning at Lind Hall and discussed deep and meaningful topics about life. The questions asked were: 1) What is cultural? 2) How is culture and science related? 3) What have we learned about our self and science? Everyone had really interesting and different things to say. Today made me realize how much I really like the mind of fellow scientists and people interested in science. They are unique individuals that see the world differently than the average person. After our discussion we went to THE MALL OF AMERICA. I typed that really big because it’s THE MALL OF AMERICA.  That mall is ridiculously big. I was really overwhelmed, confused, and tired after 2 hrs. I went back to the hotel after and took a nap.

Adrienne Warmsley

            Today we walked around the riverfront area of Minneapolis as we partook in a scavenger hunt. After nine weeks apart, our sister team from Montana finally met today in person for the first time as we took a tour of the St. Anthony’s Falls Laboratory on the Mississippi River. This was a great way to learn the city in a fun and interactive way. As the days count down in our REU, I look forward to enjoying our last days together.

Zachary Kisfalusi

Today was another work day. Students started the day in Pillsbury hall at 9:00 A.M. We continued our work from yesterday in creating a poster to present on our last day, next Friday. We continued to make good progress and it seems we will be putting the finishing touches on it tomorrow. When finished, students and mentors went to dinner at Hell’s Kitchen to enjoy some delicious food and quality time.

Wayne Greensky

Yesterday, for the entire day, the team was preparing our poster for our presentation. I was in charge of the formatting so everyone sent me all their photos and results and what section they were writing then I had to decide how to fit them on properly. All day long I sat at a computer dragging squares around on a bigger square to decide how appealing the certain squares look in certain locations and at certain sizes. Then we had a computer malfunction and I had to redo all the photos on the poster. However it ended up a polished product and it should be completely ready for presentation. It is indeed a good summary of what we have been doing in Minnesota all summer.

Alec Keiper

Today was another busy day spent working on our poster.  There is a lot of work to do within the next two days, but I am confident that the team will get it done. We also met with Emi today and went over our interpretation section of the paper. The project is beginning to wind down, and I can tell people are excited to wrap it up.  

Adrienne Warmsley

We have left Cloquet and the North Woods as we are now back in Minneapolis. Today we spent the day traveling and cleaning up our cabin. Finishing our papers and doing our posters lie ahead in the near future, but today is our R&R.

Zach Kisfalusi

                Today (July 31st) students started the day early at 7:45 A.M to go over the finishing touches on our Power Point presentation and also to have one last chance to practice our parts before presenting to the tribal council at 9:00 A.M. The meeting itself was a success. Students presented their points concisely and didn’t feel they left out any relevant information. Afterward students met with Emi individually to discuss the final section of the paper due on Sunday, the discussion. Emi gave her feedback on previous papers and after concluding the meetings students were generously taken out by Diana for lunch. Upon returning at 3:00 PM students had one final presentation to give to the teaching convention during the science fair meeting. Students also listened to presentations given by two high school students on their participation in different competitions last year.

Wayne Greensky

I perhaps became a little too ambitious, overexcited, and rushed with PCR after I figured out the process. Yesterday, I attempted to both extract DNA samples from 11 snails, and run a PCR on all of them. Though that may not sound time consuming, the DNA extraction took at least two hours, DNA quantitation 30 minutes, the PCR prep took another few hours, and the little 0.2mL tubes had to cook overnight for the reaction to work. Today, when I went in, I ran 3 gels and found that all my negative snails had supposedly “positive” results. Instead of one solid band between the 300 and 400 base pair markers, I noticed a double band in almost each snail DNA sample. I had not originally made a negative control, where I excluded template DNA. When I made the negative control later, I found that one of the PCR chemicals had been contaminated. What should have shown up as  a blank space on the gel had the same double banded pattern in the same location.

Today was a busy day starting early in the morning with a presentation for the Tribal Council. Although some of us (me) were a little nervous I think our effort and interest to inform the Fond Du Lac reservation about the project showed. I am very happy to be a little piece of the big puzzle on how anthropogenic activities affect ecosystems and natural resources.

After the presentation we met with Emi to go over our results, and start preparing for the interpretation. Later, Diana took us to Black Bear Casino to eat lunch at the buffet. We presented again for the CYCLES teachers meeting at the Cloquet Forestry Center. We even got a chance to see what other students are doing. I think it is wonderful to see other young people that are just as interested in science. 

Adrienne Warmsley

Shawnna and I had to walk a mile one way  to get a water level. I did not think ahead to get the gate open. The temperature was 100˚F and we didn’t have water to drink. The water guy without water. The background in the picture is to the south of Pablo, MT.

Chad and I are trying to find a good way to get discharge measurements at the head gate of Mud Creek

.

Team SPAW on a team building trip to Glacier National Park. “Rainy day in Glacier National Park” taken by Yana. Yana had taken this picture with my camera while I was in the Apger visitor center at the park.

Team SPAW on a team building trip to Glacier National Park. We saw a mountain goat at Logan Pass in Glacier National Park. The goat in the picture was down about three hundred feet in the valley to the north of the steps two hours before this picture was taken.

Team SPAW on a team building trip to Glacier National Park. The Cedars Nature Trail is located at Avalanche Creek pull out.  I think the Avalanche Creek falls is one of easiest falls to get to in the park. I try to get to the park every year and walk this trail to see Avalanche Creek falls.

Down in the brush work with Chad. We have been working all day in the sun it was 90˚F and I had a chance to get into the water and cool down. This was a great day because I like to be in the field.

A bear spray deployment training with Tony in background at the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Natural Resources Department Office on 6/12/2013. I was not having a good day it was cold and my arm was hurting.

There were thousands of tadpoles in this pond near Courville Lake. Jake and i saw a snake hanging right in with the tadpoles and we wondered if it was feeding on them. We also saw a few frogs in the same pond, crazy to see reptiles so high in the mountains at an elevation of 6,797 feet.