The UC System has made significant contributions to the field of climate change. Its actions to reduce our campuses' greenhouse gas emissions have been much less trailblazing. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with administrators, my project seeks to understand administrators' thoughts on climate change, as well as gauge their opinions on the UC System’s sustainability policies in hopes of understanding why the system hasn’t done more to tackle the climate crisis. This research is also relevant to those seeking to understand why other liberal institutions across the nation have not significantly reduced their greenhouse gas emissions.

Bioremediation is a type of biotechnology used as a means to remediate the environment of pollutants. In bioremediation, pollutants are degraded by microbes that are either found naturally or introduced to the environment. Biodegradation can be enhanced by the introduction of surfactants which reduce surface tension of the pollutant, making it easier for microbes to degrade. Natural surfactants called biosurfactants are created by bacteria which excrete the surfactant compound (Philip and Atlas, 2005). Synthetic surfactants can be produced by using biosurfactants as a model. Biosurfactants are usually known to be biodegradable, but the biodegradability of some synthetic surfactants are still unknown. In this study, synthetic surfactant biodegradability is identified by measuring the amount of carbon dioxide produced by microbes and surfactants in enclosed biometer flasks. The study was conducted in triplicate. 5 surfactants were studied along with a positive and negative control for a total of 21 flasks observed. Flasks contained microbes obtained from a wastewater treatment plant in Tucson, Arizona, along with an Environmental Protection Agency recommended nutrient medium and respective synthetic surfactants or control. All flasks had an attached sidearm filled with potassium hydroxide to capture carbon dioxide released into the flask’s atmosphere. Carbon dioxide was then measured by titration of the potassium hydroxide base. The purpose of this study is to determine if the synthetic surfactants are readily biodegradable, according to the Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. Although data analysis is ongoing, we hope this study will contribute to the knowledge of how to safely remediate the environment.

Snow is an important medium in photochemistry as light can penetrate several tens of centimeters and release reaction products into the atmosphere. One chemical is nitrate which undergoes photolysis to produce atmospheric oxidants and therefore influences their concentration. However, current data on nitrate reactivity is unclear since it can be found in three areas: within the solid ice matrix, the liquid-like region (grain boundaries of the ice matrix), and at the air-ice interface. Past efforts show that photolysis of nitrate occurs faster at the air-ice interface compared to the liquid-like region and aqueous solution but studies have not observed this reaction in a relevant environment that is approximate to snow. Simply freezing water is not nature identical to real life conditions which is why we have built a snow-making machine to: incorporate principles of supersaturate water vapors, form snow crystals, and ultimately vapor deposit nitrate. The snow is then exposed to simulated polar sunlight via a filtered arc lamp and is tested for nitrate’s decay rate. Other variable conditions that we have considered to test are temperature, concentration, and pH which is crucial to explore if we want to have a better understanding of nitrate reactivity. What we hope to find is the rate at which nitrate is photolyzed into atmospheric oxidants in real life conditions. Overall, a deeper understanding of nitrate photochemistry will give us a greater insight in the composition of past and current atmospheres. More importantly, this can help us characterize the severity of our climate crisis.