Heather Ballestero began her graduate work in Baton Rouge, Louisiana after graduating from the University of California Santa Cruz with dual degrees in Anthropology and Environmental Studies. In Louisiana, she embarked on the adventure of a lifetime in the embodiment of an internship that the Coastal Response Research Center (CRRC) has initiated.  As part of the project, Heather linked Sea Grant agents with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Office of Response and Restoration (NOAA OR&R) over the human dimensions involved with oil spills in Louisiana's coastal regions. Heather took courses at Louisiana State University (LSU) that will gave her unique insight and hands-on experience with the coastal wetlands and estuaries of Louisiana. She is now back in New Hampshire and continuing her work towards a Masters degree in Natural Resources from the University of New Hampshire (UNH). 

• Fall 2008 Update
• July 2008 Update
• Spring 2008 Update
• October 2007 Update
• September 2007 Update
• August 2007 Update
• July 2007 Update

Heather's presentation from Clean Gulf 2008, Mitigation of the Human Dimensions of Spills in Coastal Louisiana: Collaboration Between NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration and Louisiana Sea Grant, is available here>>

Center Co-Director, Nancy Kinner and Faculty Advisor Mimi Becker recently visited Heather.  See pictures from their dinner with Louisiana State University faculty and NOAA staff on October 2, 2007 here>>

In Summer 2009, Heather Ballestero, a UNH Natural Resources Masters student, will work toward establishing clean water and proper sanitation within the community of Lukodi, Uganda as part of ChildVoice International. Heather will educate the community on the importance of sanitation, gather feedback on culturally acceptable wastewater treatment options, construct freshwater and rainwater slow sand filters, and monitor water quality. View her proposed work here>>

Whitney Blanchard is a graduate student in the civil engineering program with the Coastal Response Research Center (CRRC) in the Environmental Research Group at UNH. In September 2006, she completed her B.S. in the environmental engineering program. Whitney’s area of research is oil spill remediation in Arctic environments. More specifically, her interest is in modeling the effects of accident oil released in ice and the risk associated with oil discharge. For the 2007–2008 academic year, Blanchard worked with environmental modelers in the Marine Environmental Technology Group at Sintef in Trondheim, Norway. Her stay at Sintef was divided into two phases. First, she worked on the oil–in–ice columns studies to simulate an oil spill under ice.  The project started on the micro– and meso–scale. The second half of her time was spent developing numerical algorithms to build a dynamic model from the column studies and earlier work by other investigators. In addition, Whitney was a visiting student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in the Programme in Coastal and Marine Civil Engineering and took several courses in the fall and spring terms.

The Center is pleased to offer Whitneys project paper, Biodegradation Potential of Oil in Arctic First-Year Sea Ice

See Whitney's poster, Numerical Modeling of Oil Fate and Transport in Ice

• Spring 2008 Update
• January 2007 Update
• December 2007 Update
• November 2007 Update
• October 2007 Update
• Septmber 2007 Update
• August 2007 Update
• July 2007 Update

Summer 2009, Whitney has a one-year contract position working for NOAA’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management (OCRM) in the Coastal Programs Division in Silver Spring, MD.  She will be supporting NOAA with meeting statutory mandates and interests related to offshore renewable energy.  OCRM has a range of responsibilities related to energy siting and planning including licensing authority for ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) plants and facilities.  Whitney's work will assist with the restoration of NOAA’s regulatory infrastructure for administering the agency’s licensing responsibilities under the Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Act.

Tyler Crowe is starting his graduate studies with the Coastal Response Research Center at UNH this year.  In May of 2008, he received a dual degree in both Civil Engineering and International Affairs from UNH. His primary graduate research will involve the use of dispersants in oil, more specifically dispersed oil’s toxicity and impact to costal and estuarine environments and to make this information available to responders to assist them in the decision to use dispersants in the field. His work will be in collaboration with the CRRC and Center of Documentation, Research and Experimentation (Cedre) in Brest, France where he will study for the year 2009. In addition to assisting Cedre, Tyler will also be observing European spill response models in order to give American responders a different outlook to our traditional models. He will be taking classes at UNH this upcoming fall.

This summer, Tyler was anintern with NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  where he worked on several projects, most notably a field assessment toxicology manual. The goal of this project was to develop a user-friendly method to determine the threat to certain species within the water column.  He tested the effectiveness of the manual in the field on oil spills as well as develop points of reference to assess oil spill damage.

• Spring 2009 Update (CEDRE, France)
  
• September 2008 Update
• June 2008 Update

Zachary Magdol is a first year master’s student in CRRC. He spent the Summer of 2008 as an intern at the NOAA facility in Seattle, WA. He began working on an abandoned vessel project with Doug Helton. The main goal of this project was to survey, accurately locate, and prioritize the risk associated with abandoned vessels in US waters. However, things changed and as it turned out Zach began working on climate change instead. He is looking into decision making surrounding climate change and the potential consequences to waste water treatment plants (WWTP). This is relevant to CRRC because WWTP, municipal or industrial, could cause significant damage to the ecosystem from inadequate treatment. Because of certain stressors brought on by climate change (e.g. sea level rise, storm surges, more frequent storms, flooding, precipitation changes) WWTP are at risk for release of pollution. Zachary hopes to design a decision tool to be used by city planners, government agencies, or public utilities to address the issues surrounding WWTPs and climate change. He will likely incorporate some geo-spatial component into this decision tool, such as ERMA (Environmental Response Management Application).

Zach has worked on a broad range of topics in the marine pollution world; Marine Debris, Abandoned Vessels, Submerged Oil, and most recently the Environmental Response Management Application. He is exploring possibilities for a thesis and would like to incorporate climate change and the potential impacts on coastal infrastructure into his research.

2007 Literature Review: Effects of Pollution on Marine Life. More>>
OR&R Weekly, 06.25.08

CRRC Summer Research Fellow Joins OR&R. More>>
OR&R Weekly, 06.05.08 

See Zach's poster, The Development of an Integrated PDA PDA-GPS Protocol for Marine Debris, Mitigation and Decision Decision-making here>>

• August 2008 Update
• May 2008 Update

Becca Rubenstein is a freshman at UNH studying Environmental Engineering. She is currently working on a research project that is examining the effects of Trichloroethene contamination on the growth and feeding rate of groundwater protists in a simulated biodegradation system. Becca is also helping UNH graduate student Lisa Damiano with chemical analysis of samples taken experimental microbial fuel cells.

Read an article about Becca's research project in the April 9, 2008 issue of UNH's Campus Journal here>>

Justin Evans is a senior at Exeter High School. He plans studying Environmental Engineering in college with a focus on aviation biofuels. This summer he worked on a project that examined the toxicity of TCE to groundwater protists and how it may influence the success of biodegradation as a remediation strategy in contaminated sandy aquifers.