Achievement

A valuable result of our NSPIRE program has been new opportunities for trainees with two new interdisciplinary research programs at WSU. The USDA Regional Approaches to Climate Change (REACCH) program is focused on mitigation and adaption to climate change for wheat producers in the Pacific Northwest. Our NSPIRE trainees are playing key roles in REACCH program objectives. For example, Sarah Waldo is a key team member of the group responsible for the deployment of eddy covariance flux towers to measure CO2 and N2O fluxes continuously over representative croplands. She recently reported on the first ever CO2 flux measurements for these cropping systems. BioEarth is supported through the NSF/USDA Earth System Modeling program and is aimed at the development of a regional earth system modeling framework for the Pacific Northwest. Sarah Anderson is working on stable isotopic analyses of archived wet deposition samples to provide an observational database for evaluation of BioEarth.