By Leah Veldhuisen ’19
When motivated students are paired with knowledgeable faculty, great projects and research often are produced. This is certainly the case for Assistant Professor of Environmental Science Rebecca Barnes and Colleen Orr ’17. The duo has published two articles this year in Sustainability: The Journal of Record as part of the publication’s “Campus Nitrogen Footprints” issue. As one of the articles explains, the release of reactive nitrogen into the environment has consequences beyond climate change – it also directly impairs water quality, air quality, and the health of the biosphere. Barnes co-authored “Calculating Institution Nitrogen Footprints Creates Connections across Campus;” Barnes and Orr co-authored “Leveraging the Nitrogen Footprint to Increase Campus Sustainability,” both of which appeared in Sustainability.
Barnes has been working with the Colorado College Office of Sustainability for the past two years on her own nitrogen research, and also works with students doing theses on similar topics. Barnes’ research began in 2015 during her first year at CC, when a colleague at Brown University suggested she and CC join a group of schools already researching their nitrogen footprints. The next year, 2016, Barnes taught a course called Human Impacts of Biogeochemical Cycles and had her students create a preliminary nitrogen footprint for the college.
Orr and Barnes first met during that course and discovered their research interests coincided. The class’s nitrogen footprint information came from food data from Bon Appetit, which provides food service on campus, and Orr was interested in continuing the work. She ended up working as Barnes’ research assistant, using the data in her thesis, and in their article titled “Leveraging the Nitrogen Footprint to Increase Campus Sustainability.”
This work on developing a nitrogen footprint for CC is part of a larger research project, called the Nitrogen Footprint Cohort. It’s a group of 18 schools that are working to incorporate nitrogen footprint data into their sustainability initiatives; CC currently is working on establishing initial information about the school’s nitrogen footprint. Although Orr says she doesn’t plan to continue nitrogen footprint research post-CC, working with Barnes taught her a lot. “Besides everything I’ve learned from her about nitrogen and using research tools like Excel, Becca has been an amazing professor, mentor, and friend to me for the past three years. I gained research and field work experience, as well as had incredible opportunities to attend conferences and publish an article because of her guidance and influence,” Orr explains. About Orr, Barnes says her “knowledge of campus and the student body was extremely helpful in thinking through the various sustainability scenarios.”
Although Orr will be graduating, Barnes will continue her work on Colorado College’s nitrogen footprint. She hopes that her research will “illustrate to CC that many of the sustainability efforts already happening on campus decrease both our nitrogen and carbon footprints,” and “will help move us toward more complete accounting of our ecological impacts.”
