Marion Bisiaux

Alumna educates public about global warming using her own research experience

Scientists are currently building on the discoveries that one University of Nevada, Reno alumna began along with her Desert Research Institute (DRI) mentors. Now Marion Bisiaux is using her expertise on pollutants to bring environmental issues to the forefront of the public’s attention.

Bisiaux studied black carbon and ice cores as part of her postgraduate research in hydrology. Her work at Lake Tahoe, which focused on how pollutants harmful to water clarity enter the lake, comprised only a third of her dissertation. But the discoveries she made led to questions that had never been asked about water clarity issues until then. Bisiaux and her DRI research partners, Ross Edwards and Alan Heyvaert, found that black carbon, a type of particle created by combustion such as in car engines or fires, could enter Lake Tahoe from storm drains on the roads in great quantities. Although these particles do not seem to affect water clarity directly, Bisiaux’s research suggested that other pollutants associated with urban pollution might also be carried to the lake along with black carbon.

Bisiaux also found high rates of black carbon in samples taken from the center of the lake. In particular, she tested samples taken shortly after the 2007 Angora Fire, which showed a spike in black carbon particles throughout the water column.

“Black carbon shouldn’t have reached these depths in the middle of the lake so quickly,” she said. “It was quite surprising.”

She and her colleagues hypothesized that the pollutants fell into the water directly from the air, attached to other larger particles and settled toward the bottom of the lake.

Bisiaux said more work is needed to learn how pollutants behave in the lake’s water and to assess the role prescribed fires and wildfires may or may not have on declining water quality.

Bisiaux finished her postdoctoral appointment in hydrology in 2011. During her last year in the program, she returned to her hometown of Grenoble, France, and began applying her expertise in ice cores and black carbon by collaborating with the Laboratory of Glaciology and Geophysical Environment (LGGE). Still, her idealism and drive to do better left her wanting more.

She took six months off to travel and help a friend write a book about ice cores. When she returned, she knew she had to try something else. She thought back to her time as a student at the University when she taught a class about the cryosphere, the totality of ice and glaciers in the world.

“I got to talk with different people in different environments about different issues, not just the cryosphere,” she said as she realized that one of the problems plaguing environmental scientists is the challenge of communicating the threat of global warming and the intricacies of scientific research.

“I’m sorry to say I was reaching a point where it felt like I was doing things that were so small that it wouldn’t change anything for anybody,” she said. “Even with all the global warming stories, some parts of science are really difficult to talk about properly.”

She left her job and enrolled in a science communication program at Stendhal University. Bisiaux graduated from the program this past June. She is currently organizing a meeting for scientists where laypersons would have an opportunity to speak with scientists directly.

Bisiaux acknowledges that her work will be more like a hobby at first, but she plans to eventually start a nonprofit that would help scientists communicate their expertise to the public in ways that can change how people think of the environment and how they affect it.