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)提供资金的。北达科他州立大学地球科学系正在扩大他们的研究计划，根据该奖项翻新的实验室是对这一扩大的补充。翻新后的空间将使科学家，包括地球科学部新聘用的两名研究人员，直接受益于共享的设施。翻修的重点将是气候变化、环境质量和南极地质研究。他们和合作教师的工作带来的智力价值包括阐明南半球的生物地理学，南极洲在其中作为进化中心的作用几乎是未知的，以及到目前为止南极气候从渐新世到上新世的重大变化。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粘土基质(如膨胀土材料)如何用于修复废水。其他要讨论的研究课题包括北美冰川消融的确切时间，特别是大型冰川湖泊的排水及其与晚期冰川气候变化的关系，以及美国中西部上部冰川成因土壤中天然高水平重金属的出现，如镉和汞。该项目的更广泛影响包括对早期职业研究人员、本科生和研究生研究的支持，对部落学院和K-12学生的各种外展计划，以及广泛的国际合作。这项工作还具有社会意义，因为在未来几十年全球大气二氧化碳浓度与地球预测的浓度相似的情况下，研究结果将直接制约南极洲冰盖的稳定性，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解决环境质量问题的潜力，如水中的高氟、高硼和高砷，以及土壤中的高镉。

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.