Benjamin T Crosby - US grants

Recent summaries of international research clearly document the past and future extent of climate warming in the Arctic. These summaries suggest that in the future, rising temperatures will be accompanied by increased precipitation, mostly as rain: 20% more over the Arctic as a whole and up to 30% more in coastal areas during the winter and autumn. These climate changes will have important impacts on Arctic Systems. Of direct interest to this research is the likelihood that warming will promote permafrost degradation and thaw. Formerly frozen soils may be further destabilized by increased precipitation, leading to hillslope thermokarst failures. Recent work has documented that thermokarst failures are abundant and appear to have become more numerous around Toolik Lake on the eastern North Slope and in the western Noatak River basin in Alaska. A widespread and long-term increase in the incidence of thermokarst failures may have important impacts on the structure and function of arctic headwater landscapes. This research will use a systems approach to address hypotheses about how thermokarst failures influence the structure and function of the arctic landscape. It will focus on the composition of vegetation, the distribution and processing of soil nutrients, and exports of sediments and nutrients to stream and lake ecosystems. Results obtained at this hillslope scale will be linked to patterns observed at the landscape scale to test hypotheses about the spatial distribution of thermokarst failures in the arctic foothills. It is important to understand these interactions because perhaps the greatest potential impacts of changing land surface processes and formation of thermokarst failures are feedbacks to the climate system through energy, albedo, water, and trace gas exchange.

This research is designed to quantify linkages among climatology, hillslope hydrology, geomorphology, geocryology, community ecology of vegetation, soil nutrient dynamics, microbial ecology, trace gas dynamics, and aquatic ecology. It will employ a combination of field experimentation, remote sensing, and simulation modeling as a means to quantify these relationships.

This award is providing funds to upgrade digital mapping facilities for the Idaho State University Digital Mapping Laboratory. The workstations, servers, and associated gigabit network connections supported by this grant are providing modern work stations that will better service existing and future research projects at ISU. The digital mapping facilities supported by the project are contributing to four interdisciplinary near-surface research themes: field characterization and modeling of landscape response to contemporary and ancient changes in climate or tectonics; short-term landscape, soil, and vegetation change as documented by hyperspectral and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) techniques; geospatially distributed, GIS-based hydrologic and water quality modeling at the watershed scale in mountain environments, and simulation of ground-water flow based on statistical analysis and 3-D modeling of inter-bedded volcanic and sedimentary deposits. Each of these research groups pair innovative datasets and techniques against applied and theoretical questions that advance our understanding of water resources, climate change and remote sensing capabilities.

The computer facility upgrade is supporting the research efforts of several early career researchers at Idaho State University, as well as promoting teaching and training of a core group of graduate and undergraduate research assistants in the Department of Geosciences. Increased access to remote sensing and GIS data and applications complements the student-directed research projects in hydrology, structural geology, stratigraphy, geomorphology, and petrology. Results of these projects are being incorporated into the undergraduate and graduate curriculum. Over the lifespan of these computers, about 375 geoscience majors and graduate students are expected to benefit from these facilities. Because approximately 40% of the students who will use the laboratory are members of an underrepresented group, the award is helping to broaden participation in the geosciences. The research projects supported by this award are expected to have a societal impact specifically on decisions regarding Idaho's land use, water resources, and urban expansion and economic development.

This project will further geologic understanding of tectonic history and its imprint on the current landscape. Understanding landscape response to tectonics can inform land management decisions and aid in quantifying hazard risk. The project focuses on two specific landscapes from NSF supported Critical Zone Observatories (CZO) and leverages existing data and resources from these two sites. The project combines field work, laboratory analysis, and modeling. Project outcomes will benefit the Earth science research community as well as policy makers. Landlab, the computational model that will be used and further developed in this project, will be made available through the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSDMS) website. The project will also provide a K-12 training module and Landlab numerical modeling exercises for undergraduate and graduate students.

This study explores the unique signature of landscape adjustment following a change in tectonics in two different settings: South Fork Eel River, Northern California, USA and Rio Icacos, in Northeastern Puerto Rico. In both field areas, the current topography indicates that part of the landscape has not yet adjusted to a past or ongoing tectonic disturbance. The overall objective of the project is to understand and quantify the temporal evolution of the entire landscape, focusing specifically on the transformation of the relict topography to adjusted topography in these two field sites. A framework to interpret tectonic history of landscapes based on distribution of relict and adjusted topography will be developed through a combination of field work, cosmogenic nuclide geochronology, and landscape evolution modeling. Field work will include mapping relict parts of the landscape and quantifying morphologic features that vary between the adjusted and relict topography. Field observations will be combined with analyses of digital topographic maps. This work will allow future studies to easily identify relict topography in other landscapes. Geochemical techniques will be used to measure the spatially averaged denudation rate across the two landscapes. Numerical experiments using Landlab will be performed to understand how the tectonic history is expressed in the topography and denudation rate patterns.

There is a strong need for integration of geodesy into university geoscience instruction. Geodesy is the study of the size, shape, and mass of Earth and their changes with time. Recent developments in geodesy have revolutionized our understanding of Earth processes and produced discoveries of significant impact to society. Geodesy field techniques are particularly valuable for assessment of natural hazards and other geologic processes. In addition to scientific research, geodetic technologies can be applied to a wide variety of commercial and government sector applications. The primary goal of this project is to improve students' skills in using geodetic technologies through their integration into geoscience field education. Hands-on, field-based experiences provide a unique learning opportunity for students to explore phenomena directly. In this project, curriculum materials will be developed for instructors and students that will help them learn about a variety of geodesy field techniques. During this two-year project at least 240 undergraduate geoscience students will be directly impacted with that number growing to several thousand within five years due to training university faculty to incorporate the learning materials into their college classes.


This project provides a pathway for faculty to effectively integrate geodetic technologies in field experiences. This project will significantly expand resources for undergraduate geoscience student learning of geodetic field methods, research the implementation of resources by faculty in field experiences, and develop a framework to scale to multiple technologies and reach multiple universities. This project will develop, test, and disseminate two learning modules featuring geodetic field methods relevant for a wide array of geoscience applications, and will include robust measure of student learning and dissemination of developed resources to faculty members in short courses, as well as research of faculty implementation. This collaboration between UNAVCO, Idaho State University and Indiana University brings together expertise in geodetic field methods, field instruction, curriculum design, and science education research. The Science Education Resource Center (SERC) will provide assessment consulting, research support, project evaluation, and website hosting. National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT) will support dissemination. The learning modules will provide instructional faculty resources to teach geodetic technologies in ways that help students develop critical thinking and other skills necessary to succeed in applied and academic sciences. A second emphasis will be on training and dissemination including short courses for faculty members with both technical and pedagogical aspects, providing a pathway for improved teaching methods in the field and classroom. We will conduct research on the effective adoption of field education teaching materials created by someone else at five universities. Data collected during the implementation and testing of learning modules will contribute to the body of educational research by analyzing the process of adoption of curricular materials by instructors in diverse field settings. This research will aid the efficiency of future curriculum development through better understanding of instructor needs.

This project aims to serve the national interest in high-quality undergraduate STEM education by improving student access to cutting-edge geodesy methods in Earth Science field courses. Geodesy is the science of accurately measuring and understanding the Earth?s geometric shape, orientation in space, and gravity field, and how these properties change over time. Geodetic technologies can be applied to societally critical geoscience topics such as hazard assessment and response, as well as to topics with commercial or governmental value. As a result, geodetic technologies are driving changes in workforce demands and increasing the need for including geodetic field methods and related quantitative skills in undergraduate education. To meet these needs, the project plans to: train instructors how to incorporate geodetic field methods into their college courses; develop a loan program to provide educators access to geodetic equipment; and increase the availability of technical support for instructors.

This project specifically aims to broaden access of undergraduate students to the geodetic technologies of GPS, Structure from Motion (SfM), and Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS). To increase student engagement and learning in geodetics, the project will create short courses for instructors. These short courses will help instructors identify societally-relevant geoscience research questions that will provide relevance and context for students to learn and apply geodetic technologies. More than 100 instructors will participate in these short courses, resulting in more than 1500 students who will learn to use geodetic field methods over the course of the grant. The project aims to develop sustainable changes in college instruction that could reach even more students in the future. The project will examine the efficacy and adoption of teaching materials produced through 1-day and 2.5-day short courses, as well as more intensive, smaller cohort groups. These data will contribute to the body of educational research, particularly the impact of faculty professional development in improving field education. The teaching materials developed by the project participants will continue to be evaluated by and disseminated through the website of the Science Education Resource Center (SERC), which has 5 million visitors per year (serc.carleton.edu/getsi). This project responds to community needs and has the potential to contribute to the critical need of a diverse, Earth Science-ready STEM workforce. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. This project is in the Engaged Student Learning track and Development and Implementation tier; it builds on work of an earlier IUSE-funded Exploration and Design tier project. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

The Promoting Diverse and Inclusive Leadership in the Geosciences project will develop and test a framework that incentivizes and rewards Inclusive Leaders in the Geosciences through changes in faculty workload policy and annual evaluations. The PIs will use a collective impact approach to engage the faculty and student partners in the process. The framework will identify training activities and evidence-based illustrative practices related to becoming and growing as Inclusive Leaders. In order to create long-term systemic change, the faculty workload policy and annual evaluation process will be amended to include this framework. Department chairs and faculty will create these amendments iteratively with support from the Dean and Provost at Boise State University. This work will first be performed at Boise State and then tested independently at Idaho State University (ISU) in order to ensure that it is adaptable to other Geoscience units at other universities across the country. Through the framework, PIs plan to provide a mechanism to institutionalize the importance, value, and recognition of leaders in diversity and inclusion. Importantly, the results and the adaptable framework will be available to other programs and departments.

This project develops the novel approach of changing policy strategies to develop and support Inclusive Leaders in Geosciences. By altering the department workload policy and annual evaluation process governing rewardable actions, the PIs will identify different avenues for faculty to be rewarded for becoming and growing as Inclusive Leaders. Importantly, the process will include the student voice, thus incorporating what constitutes inclusivity from a student perspective, as well as building a pathway for future Inclusive Leaders. By both developing and testing the strategies at two institutions, the PIs will advance knowledge in how to support and sustain these leaders. This project seeks to develop novel approaches in 1) valuing and rewarding individual faculty Inclusive Leaders, and 2) engineering a road map for success that will be both long-lived and transferable to other Geoscience departments.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

Liquid water in the Arctic flows at or near the surface above frozen ground known as permafrost. As permafrost thaws, water flows along new paths, mobilizing previously frozen carbon. If permafrost soils thaw and dry, carbon is released three times more readily than if permafrost soils thaw and remain saturated, implying that water patterns partially control carbon release. Yet, the patterns or drivers of permafrost saturation and how they vary with climate remain poorly understood. This research will use field measurements, remote sensing, and modeling to investigate the dynamics, drivers, and sensitivity of hillslope saturation patterns on the North Slope of Alaska. Results will help to create an ‘H2cOld: Water in the Arctic’ traveling outreach activity for rural K-12 students and communities throughout the southern Appalachians and Idaho. The project will also train four undergraduate students and a graduate student for science careers.

The hydrology of Arctic hillslopes underlain by continuous permafrost is largely controlled by water tracks, seasonally saturated zero-order features draining a third of the upland Arctic. Water tracks can rapidly degrade into thermoerosional gullies, the most common Arctic thermoerosional feature, altering seasonal saturation and fluxes of water, nutrients, and sediments. Although water tracks and thermoerosional gullies are the largest and most variable aquatic sources of permafrost carbon release, their saturation dynamics and how these dynamics change as permafrost thaws remain poorly understood. These two features are hypothesized to represent endmembers of the surface network extent of Arctic hillslope hydrology with distinct saturation patterns that are diverging as the climate warms. This research project will test this hypothesis in paired water tracks and thermoerosional gullies in northern Alaska via remote sensing and field campaigns to calibrate a water-energy transport model with variable saturation and freeze-thaw capabilities. Collectively, this work will improve predictions of saturation-controlled carbon release from the Arctic.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

This project focuses on recruiting and retaining Native American students into the Geosciences through three strategies that engage with participants at multiple points of contact from junior high to undergraduate levels. People of Native American descent make about ~4% of Bannock County’s population (home to ISU), however they only represent about ~1% of ISU’s student population and less than 1% of ISU Geoscience majors. Initially, PIs plan to work with Shoshone Bannock Jr./Sr. High School teachers and tribal elders to develop geoscience curriculum and field-based activities that tie tribal culture to iconic landscapes of Idaho and Wyoming. Secondly, a project mentor will focus on early-undergraduate and transfer student geoscience internship opportunities to facilitate career pathways. Geoscience faculty and the mentor will connect students to campus resources such as Native American Student Services, Counseling and Testing and the Career Path Internship program for educational and career pathway support. Lastly, PIs will work with the ISU Bengal Bridge Program which is a transition program between high school and college to develop best practices for recruiting through field visits.

This program will focus on recruiting Native Americans into the geosciences at Idaho State University (ISU) in collaboration with six educational and non-profit partners. The overarching goal is to increase the number and diversity of geoscientists attaining undergraduate degrees in eastern Idaho. To achieve this, the PIs offer a three-pronged effort that will blend informal and formal geoscience learning ecosystem strategies with multiple points of contact across a continuum of education levels. The three levels of engagement for the participants include 1) building a sense of identity by offering summer professional skill building through a youth employment program and related activities, 2) accessing trained mentors who will engage in both professional and geoscience development elements and 3) providing access to a bridge transition program that will ready students to enter undergraduate programs. The activities in this collaborative network of partnerships are based on established Community of Practice and Self-Efficacy models that can effectively support diverse recruitment and retention.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.