Peter Blanken

Geography Professor Peter Blanken Publishes New Book: Essentials of Water (Water in the Earth's Physical and Biological Environments)

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 19:28:35 +0000

Geography Professor Peter Blanken Publishes New Book: Essentials of Water (Water in the Earth's Physical and Biological Environments) Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/28/2025 - 13:28

Water shapes the planet and all life upon it. Breaking down traditional disciplinary barriers, this accessible, holistic introduction to the role and importance of water in Earth's physical and biological environments assumes no prior knowledge. It provides the reader with a clear and coherent explanation of the unique properties of water and how these allow it to affect landscapes and underpin all life on Earth. Contemporary issues surrounding water quality – such as the rise of microplastics and climate change – are highlighted, ensuring readers understand current debates. Giving all of the necessary background and up-to-date references, and including numerous examples and illustrations to explain concepts, worked mathematical calculations, and extensive end-of-chapter questions, this is the ideal introductory textbook for students seeking to understand the inextricable links between water and the environment.

Key features of the book

Examines the role and importance of water in both the physical and biological environment in a multi-disciplinary framework
Provides all of the scientific and mathematical background for a full understanding of the properties of water and its effect on its surroundings, with clear and simple explanations
Makes no assumptions about students' prior knowledge by providing numerous examples, photographs, and illustrations to explain concepts
The book is very well suited for courses where a traditional physical hydrology or water policy textbook is not appropriate and/or too advanced and in-depth, providing the structure and organization that can be used to match course objectives for an introductory, basic course on water, and saving instructors' time

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Blanken and Team Measure Reservoir Evaporation

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 19:26:01 +0000

Blanken and Team Measure Reservoir Evaporation Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/28/2025 - 13:26

The water cycle is something we’ve all heard about. Water falls from the sky, soaks into soils and forms streams and rivers that fill lakes or flow into oceans. Evaporation returns water to the atmosphere, and the cycle continues. When we’re concerned with having too much or not enough water, we must measure and model the water cycle to better manage water resources, yet accurate measurements can be challenging.

Along the Colorado Front Range and in many arid and semi-arid regions world-wide, surface reservoirs store meltwater from the alpine snowpack. The water is then allocated and distributed downstream to water rights holders during the dry, summer months. Accurate accounting of this water is required to assure that the agreed-upon distributions are made. Water inputs and outputs from these reservoirs must therefore be known, including how much water evaporates. The water ‘lost’ through evaporation is especially important since it can be a large term in the water cycle. Reservoir managers in Colorado must release water in an amount equal to the volume evaporated from the reservoir. This release compensates downstream users for the water that they would have had access to without the added evaporation loss from the reservoir.

Historically, evaporation pans, a large dish filled with water located near a reservoir, have been used to measure evaporation. Although the concept is simple and evaporation pans are practical, they rarely provide an accurate estimate of actual reservoir evaporation. Improper placement, and the small volume of water stored compared to a reservoir, typically results in large overestimates of evaporation in the summertime, large underestimates in the fall, and no estimates in the winter when the pans are removed.

In an effort to help manage water resources, Professor Blanken and his PhD candidate, Holly Roth, are directly measuring evaporation from Standley Lake reservoir in Westminster Colorado using a state-of-the-art method seldom used over reservoirs in the American West. As recently featured on Colorado Public Radio, they installed a suite of meteorological sensors used to measure evaporation. These measurements have been collected since 2020, and help water managers to allocate precisely the correct volume of water, thereby saving water for times when it’s really needed. Their goal is to use a reservoir water balance model to extend their measurements to other reservoirs across the Front Range. As the Front Range’s population and air temperature continues to increase, and the snowpack decreases, their hope is that this research will help conserve this important resource. According to Professor Blanken, “Just as people and plants need water, so does the atmosphere. For each degree Celsius increase in air temperature, the atmosphere’s demand for water vapor increases by 7%, so it’s very important that that we measure and account for all sources of water loss including evaporation.”

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Alpine tundra releases long-frozen CO2

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 16:39:17 +0000

Alpine tundra releases long-frozen CO2 Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/02/2019 - 10:39

Trent Knoss

Thawing permafrost in high-altitude mountain ecosystems may be a stealthy, underexplored contributor to atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions, new CU С��Ƶ research shows.

The new findings, published today in the journal Nature Communications, show that alpine tundra in Colorado’s Front Range emits more CO2 than it captures annually, potentially creating a feedback loop that could increase climate warming and lead to even more CO2 emissions in the future.

A similar phenomenon exists in the Arctic, where research in recent decades has shown that melting permafrost is unearthing long-frozen tundra soil and releasing CO2 reserves that had been buried for centuries.

“We wondered if the same thing could be happening in alpine terrain,” said John Knowles, lead author of the new study and a former doctoral student in CU С��Ƶ’s Department of Geography and a researcher at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR). “This study is a strong indication that that is indeed the case.”

Forests have long been considered vital carbon ‘sinks,’ sequestering more carbon than they produce and helping to mitigate global CO2 levels. As part of the Earth’s carbon cycle, trees and other vegetation absorb CO2 via photosynthesis while microbes (which decompose soil nutrients and organic material) emit it back to the atmosphere via respiration, just as humans release CO2 with every breath.

Melting permafrost, however, changes that equation. As previously frozen tundra soil thaws and becomes exposed for the first time in years, its nutrients become freshly available for microbes to consume. And unlike plants, which go dormant in winter, microscopic organisms can feast all year long if environmental conditions are right.

To study this effect in alpine conditions, researchers measured the surface-to-air CO2 transfer over seven consecutive years (2008-2014) at the Niwot Ridge Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in Colorado, a high-altitude research project funded by the National Science Foundation that has been in continuous operation for over 35 years. The team also collected samples of soil CO2 and used radiocarbon dating to estimate how long the carbon forming that CO2 had been present in the landscape.

The study showed, somewhat surprisingly, that barren, wind-scoured tundra landscapes above 11,000 feet emitted more CO2 than they captured each year, and that a fraction of that CO2 was relatively old during the winter, the first such finding of its kind in temperate latitudes. The findings suggest higher-than-expected year-round microbial activity, even in the absence of a deep insulating snowpack.

“Microbes need it to be not too cold and not too dry, they need liquid water,” said Knowles, now a researcher at the University of Arizona. “The surprise here is that we show winter microbial activity persisting in permafrost areas that don’t collect much insulating snowpack due to wind stripping it away.”

While the alpine tundra’s net CO2 contributions are small compared to a forest’s sequestration capability, the newly-documented effect may act as something of a counterweight, hampering atmospheric CO2 reductions from mountain ecosystems in general. The findings will need to be factored in to future projections of global warming, Knowles said.

“Until now, little was known about how alpine tundra behaved with regard to this balance, and especially how it could continue emitting CO2 year after year” Knowles said. “But now, we have evidence that climate change or another disturbance may be liberating decades-to-centuries-old carbon from this landscape.”

Additional co-authors of the study include Peter Blanken of CU С��Ƶ’s Department of Geography; Mark Williams of CU С��Ƶ and INSTAAR; and Corey Lawrence of the U.S. Geological Survey. The National Science Foundation provided funding for the research.

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GEOG 3601 / ATOC 3600 / ENVS 3600 Principles of Climate

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 20:29:37 +0000

GEOG 3601 / ATOC 3600 / ENVS 3600 Principles of Climate Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/08/2017 - 14:29

This course describes the basic components of the climate system: the atmosphere, ocean, cyrosphere, and lithosphere. We will investigate the basic physical processes that determine climate and the link between the components of the climate system. Emphasis is placed on the hydrologic cycle and its role in climate, climate stability, and global change. The theme throughout this course will be an examination of the importance of climate as one of the major forcing functions in environmental change. Both human-induced and natural climate variability will be covered.

See the University Catalog for specifics, recommendations, and prerequisites.

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Prof finds reasons for climate hope

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 20:11:42 +0000

Prof finds reasons for climate hope Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 02/17/2016 - 13:11

Peter Blanken

Geography Professor Peter Blanken Publishes New Book: Essentials of Water (Water in the Earth's Physical and Biological Environments)

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Blanken and Team Measure Reservoir Evaporation

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Alpine tundra releases long-frozen CO2

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GEOG 3601 / ATOC 3600 / ENVS 3600 Principles of Climate

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Prof finds reasons for climate hope

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Lighthouse Study Tracks Evaporation

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Research Looks at Lakes in New Way

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Peter Blanken Receives College С����Ƶ Award

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Department Receives ASSETT Award

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Peter Blanken Receives College С��Ƶ Award