Renovation for Climate Change & Environmental Quality Laboratory at North Dakota State University

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。北达科他州立大学地球科学系正在扩大他们的研究项目，在该奖项下翻新的实验室补充了这一扩展。翻新后的空间将使科学家们，包括地球科学系新聘用的两名研究人员，直接从共享设施中受益。整修的重点将放在气候变化、环境质量和南极地质方面的研究。他们的工作以及合作教员的工作所产生的智力价值包括阐明南半球生物地理学，其中南极洲作为进化中心的作用几乎是未知的，并继续研究从渐新世到上新世期间南极气候的主要变化。环境质量研究小组在新装修的实验室空间所做的工作将进一步了解泥质基质（如膨胀土材料）如何在废水修复中发挥作用。需要解决的其他研究课题的例子包括北美冰川消融的确切时间，特别侧重于大型前冰期湖泊的排水及其与冰期晚期气候变化的关系，以及在整个美国中西部上部的冰川土壤中发现的镉和汞等自然高水平重金属的发生。该项目的更广泛影响包括支持早期职业研究人员，本科生和研究生的研究，为部落学院和K-12学生提供各种推广计划，以及广泛的国际合作。这项工作还具有社会意义，因为当全球大气二氧化碳浓度与未来几十年地球的预测浓度相似时，其结果将对南极洲冰盖的稳定性提供直接约束，从而为校准海平面上升的预测模型提供数据。其他重要成果将包括许多国家有可能解决环境质量问题，如水中氟化物、硼和砷浓度高以及土壤中镉浓度高。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). North Dakota State University's Department of Geosciences is expanding their research program and the laboratories renovated under this award complement this expansion. The renovated space will bring scientists, including two newly hired researchers within the Geosciences Department, to benefit directly from the shared facility. The focus of the renovation will be for research in climate change, environmental quality and Antartic geology. Intellectual merit stemming from their work, and that of collaborating faculty, includes the elucidation of southern hemisphere biogeography, in which Antarctica's role as a center of evolution is mostly unknown, and continued work to date major shifts in Antarctic climate from Oligocene through Pliocene time. Work done by the environmental quality research group in newly renovated laboratory space will further the understanding of how argillaceous matrices such as expansive earth materials function for the remediation of wastewater. Examples of additional research topics to be addressed include the exact timing of North American deglaciation, focusing especially on the drainage of large proglacial lakes and their relation to late glacial climate change and the occurrence of naturally high levels of heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury in glaciogenic soils found throughout the upper Midwestern United States.The broader impacts of this project include the support of early career researchers, undergraduate and graduate student research, a variety of outreach programs to tribal colleges and K-12 students, and extensive international collaboration. The work also has societal relevance in that the outcomes will offer direct constraints on the stability of Antarctica's ice sheet during times when global atmospheric CO2 concentrations were similar to those predicted for Earth in coming decades, and thus will provide data to calibrate predictive models of sea-level rise. Additional important outcomes will include the potential for many countries to address environmental quality problems such as high fluoride, boron, and arsenic concentrations in water, and high cadmium concentrations in soils.