Q&A with Katie Gannon, Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship winner

Incoming PhD student Katie Gannon (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) has garnered this year’s Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship. She will investigate greenhouse gas emissions from seasonally ice-covered lakes, working with advisor Bella Oleksy.

Gannon is returning to CU Boulder, where she was an undergraduate student, after earning her master’s degree from Montana State University. She was most recently the lab manager for the Holgerson Lab at Cornell University, and before that was a wilderness instructor and naturalist working to expand equitable access to wilderness and the outdoors.

We asked Katie about her research, plans for the summer, and life as a scientist and outdoor advocate.

Q: What is your research about?

Lakes and inland waters produce a lot of greenhouses gases—most people don’t realize that. They’re creating methane and CO₂ [carbon dioxide]. Lakes in high places are especially interesting, because they have ice cover during the cold part of the year. Think of the ice as a lid, a kind of layer that keeps the greenhouse gases from coming out. We don’t know exactly what is going on under that lid or what happens in spring when the ice melts. That introduces a lot of uncertainty about where greenhouse gases are coming from as we look at inputs into climate change.

It’s still a pretty big unknown. When the ice melts, what happens? Do the gases come out in one big burp, or more gradually? How do we measure it? If we miss ice off, how does that throw off our measurements?

My work is to look at accumulation rates of greenhouse gases under the ice and release in the spring.

Q: What will you be working on this summer as part of your Crump Fellowship?

We’ll choose which five lakes we’re going to use. I’ll spend time scouting and finding lakes. Working in alpine areas, you have all these big gradients in a small space. It’s really, really nice as a study system. I also just love the mountains, so it’s a fun place to be.

We’ll be able to instrument all these lakes. And I’d like to build these sensors—I’ve been working with a collaborator of mine, Jonas Stage Sø at the University of Southern Denmark who did his PhD on building machines that are $400 each and continuously measure CO₂ and methane. Whereas, the lab-based machines are closer to $40,000 each. We want to bring in and deploy these machines in Green Lakes Valley.

I’m also trying to pilot some methods this summer. There are a lot of ways to measure greenhouse gases. I’ll be working with Kevin [Rozmiarek] and Sylvia [Michel] in the Stable Isotope Lab to look at greenhouse gas abundance and isotopes. One of the best things about being here is all of the collaboration and cross-pollination.

Also just sitting with the data and looking at it!

Q: You’ve been involved in many adaptive programs for equity in the outdoors—can you tell us about that?

A thing that’s really, really important to me is improving access to the outdoors and access to science.

A bad accident in high school meant I was in a wheelchair for a while. And getting out into nature or into science is a lot harder with any kind of disability.

I’ve taught a lot of adaptive skiing to people with different physical abilities and who are neurodiverse.

It’s easy for adventure science to be filled with only people who look like me. So it’s important that we open up science and open up the outdoors to everyone.

The thing that continuously strikes me is that if you really try to include people, there are small things that all of us can do that can make a big difference. For example, I volunteered at Big Sky Ski Resort and when they put in a new chair lift system, it was really hard for people using sit skis to get on the lift. (There was a bar they couldn’t get the ski over). We asked the resort  to accommodate sit skis, and all it took was removing a small plastic piece on every third chair so that folks in sit skis could sit comfortably and safely. That opens up so much more terrain and so much more space for people.

Making outdoor spaces welcoming and accessible to everyone is deeply important to me and I think that we can all engage and make a difference.

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not sciencing?

I’m a runner. I trail run a lot. I’m actually training for a 50K right now.

I really like winter running. I love to ski. I read a lot of books.

That’s basically me: I do a lot of reading, I do a lot of running, I do a lot of skiing, I do a lot of science!

Crump Fellowship award ceremony

Learn about the Sarah Crump Graduate Fellowship, which provides summer support for a graduate student researching Earth or environmental science in Arctic, Antarctic, or alpine regions.