Posts tagged seasonal
Help needy to have a good holiday season
Nov 13th
Boulder County, Colo. – With the holidays approaching, Boulder County programs that work with low-income families are once again reaching out to local residents and businesses in hopes of making the holidays a little brighter for families in need.
These programs are greatly appreciated by the people who participate in them, and Boulder County encourages members of the community to join in the effort to brighten the lives of individuals and families who would otherwise do without over the holiday season.
The following programs help provide basic needs such as groceries and household items for families, seniors and people with disabilities in our community, as well as clothing, toys and games for children:
· The Family-To-Family (F2F) Holiday Program, in its 39th year, serves the county’s low-income and basic needs families and individuals who are clients of the Child Protection, Adolescent, and Adult Protection (elderly and disabled adults) programs. Last year F2F served over 450 families (totaling more than 1,400 individuals).
As the program prepares to turn 40 next year, Family-To-Family is seeking more opportunities to give families the primary voice in decisions affecting their lives. Recognizing that many parents relish the opportunity to purchase presents for their own children, and teens and disabled or elderly adults clients have long preferred the chance to shop for themselves, F2F is asking donors beginning this year to support clients who would prefer to receive gift cards and do the holiday shopping themselves. The program typically seeks a contribution of $75 per participating individual or family member, and donors can use that figure to determine the number of individuals they wish to support. For more information, call 303-441-1050 or email Debbie at dramirez@bouldercounty.org or Lou at lcrnkovich@bouldercounty.org.
· Family Self-Sufficiency’s (FSS) Holiday Gift Sponsor program serves Boulder County families in the Family Self-Sufficiency program who are working to gain education and skills to help them achieve higher wage jobs and better living situations for their families. For the holidays, the highest-need FSS families submit a “wish list” that sponsors can shop from. Donors spend a minimum of $30 and a maximum of $100 for each person in the family. Sponsors purchase items on the list – or, for donors who find that a full family sponsorship is more than they can take on, the program also gratefully accepts cash donations or gift cards (e.g., grocery stores, Target, Wal-Mart) to help with groceries and basic household needs, as well as cash donations to assist with basic needs for FSS families throughout the year. To sponsor or make a donation for an FSS family, contact Katie Frye at 303-441-3923 or kfrye@bouldercounty.org.
· Boulder County Housing Authority Senior Services assists low-income seniors. Many of these seniors have expensive medications and other high medical costs, and buying groceries and other basic needs can be difficult. Gift cards to local grocery or discount retail stores go a long way in helping a senior make ends meet during the holidays. For more information, contact Kris at kdurso@bouldercounty.org at 303-519-7152.
· The Casa de la Esperanza Learning Center provides academic support and enrichment opportunities for over 30 families on-site plus another dozen families in a nearby neighborhood of south Longmont. These families are seasonal farm workers employed in the local dairies, farms and greenhouses. As the growing season comes to a close in the cold months just before the holidays, the Casa de la Esperanza families face economic difficulties and must endure winter on a very tight budget. Donations of school supplies, winter clothing, grocery gift cards, and presents for children are greatly appreciated. If you can help in any way, please contact Carlota Loya-Hernandez, Program Coordinator at 303-678-6220 or cloya@bouldercounty.org.
Annual donors to these worthwhile holiday giving programs include individuals, families, sports teams, clubs and hobbyist groups, faith-based organizations and local corporations and businesses. Donations are tax deductible, and contributions of any size are gratefully welcomed.
Boulder Rangers have a quiet week, goats to invade
Aug 9th
The goats are coming; the goats are coming!
Approximately 300 goats will move onto the Stengel l property (Tallgrass West area) sometime this weekend. The goats are part of a long term project established in 2011 looking at ways to reduce chicory, a blue flowered exotic perennial that has invaded our tallgrass communities. Staff is looking at how goats, cattle and prescribed fire when appropriate effect chicory densities and its’ spread. Thanks to Lynn, Ann Lezberg and others for making this happen.The contractor will be on site 24/7 as permitted by the City. Educational signs have been posted at all access points.
Rangers:
Rangers responded to:
• A report of an injured hiker on the Royal Arch trail. The hiker fell and injured her right ankle.Rangers worked with RMR and AMR on this call.
• A report of a lost hiker in the area of the Royal Arch.
Rangers were able to talk the person back down to the trails.
• A report of a fire in the five mile marker of Left Hand Canyon.
Rangers located three juveniles having a campfire and issued summonses for this offense.
Ranger Job Opening
The open OSMP Ranger Naturalist positions have been posted and we will be accepting applicants through 8/20. If you have any qualified seasonal staff, friends or former co-workers interested please direct them here:
https://bouldercolorado.gov/jobs-and-volunteer
Trail
On Aug 1st, members of the Mountain Bike Patrol joined OSMP staff to construct a temporary trail connection between Community Ditch and Coal Seam Trail. This temporary trail will allow visitors to make a loop on those trails, during construction of the Hwy 93 underpass. Once the underpass is complete, this trail will be closed and restored.
Xcel Energy will be starting the line / pole replacement project in the next couple days. Starting from the South, Plainview area, they will work North using Flatirons Vista access and on to Eldorado substation, their contractor will be using Greenbelt Plateau for employee parking with OSMP placards.
Community Outreach
OSMP started leading public Natural Selections programs into the Weiser property last weekend. Dave Sutherland took a large group to see the sandstone cliffs, turtle backs, rare plants and bald eagles that inhabit this special and fragile place. OSMP will continue to offer public guided hikes through August, September and October while the property is open for visitation. The area can only be visited with an OSMP guide, and the hikes are limited to 15 by reservation. At the end of October, a bald eagle nesting closure goes into effect until next August and the location will be closed once more.
Channel 8 covers the OSMP Art Show – https://vimeo.com/71605401
The art show is located in the Boulder Public Library Canyon Gallery (1001 Arapahoe Avenue, Boulder). The show is open to the public and will run from July 20 – August 28 during normal library hours. Drop in and see how Open Space inspires local artists!
Ice-free Arctic winters could explain amplified warming during Pliocene
Jul 29th
Year-round ice-free conditions across the surface of the Arctic Ocean could explain why the Earth was substantially warmer during the Pliocene Epoch than it is today, despite similar concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to new research carried out at the University of Colorado Boulder.
The last time researchers believe the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere reached 400 ppm—between 3 and 5 million years ago during the Pliocene—the Earth was about 3.5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer (2 to 5 degrees Celsius) than it is today. During that time period, trees overtook the tundra, sprouting right to the edges of the Arctic Ocean, and the seas swelled, pushing ocean levels 65 to 80 feet higher.
Scientists’ understanding of the climate during the Pliocene has largely been pieced together from fossil records preserved in sediments deposited beneath lakes and on the ocean floor.
“When we put 400 ppm carbon dioxide into a model, we don’t get as warm a planet as we see when we look at paleorecords from the Pliocene,” said Jim White, director of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and co-author of the new study published online in the journal Palaeogeography, Paleoclimatology, Palaeoecology. “That tells us that there may be something missing in the climate models.”
Scientists have proposed several hypotheses in the past to explain the warmer Pliocene climate. One idea, for example, was that the formation of the Isthmus of Panama, the narrow strip of land linking North and South America, could have altered ocean circulations during the Pliocene, forcing warmer waters toward the Arctic. But many of those hypotheses, including the Panama possibility, have not proved viable.
For the new study, led by Ashley Ballantyne, a former CU-Boulder doctoral student who is now an assistant professor of bioclimatology at the University of Montana, the research team decided to see what would happen if they forced the model to assume that the Arctic was free of ice in the winter as well as the summer during the Pliocene. Without these additional parameters, climate models set to emulate atmospheric conditions during the Pliocene show ice-free summers followed by a layer of ice reforming during the sunless winters.
“We tried a simple experiment in which we said, ‘We don’t know why sea ice might be gone all year round, but let’s just make it go away,’ ” said White, who also is a professor of geological sciences. “And what we found was that we got the right kind of temperature change and we got a dampened seasonal cycle, both of which are things we think we see in the Pliocene.”
In the model simulation, year-round ice-free conditions caused warmer conditions in the Arctic because the open water surface allowed for evaporation. Evaporation requires energy, and the water vapor then stored that energy as heat in the atmosphere. The water vapor also created clouds, which trapped heat near the planet’s surface.
“Basically, when you take away the sea ice, the Arctic Ocean responds by creating a blanket of water vapor and clouds that keeps the Arctic warmer,” White said.
White and his colleagues are now trying to understand what types of conditions could bridge the standard model simulations with the simulations in which ice-free conditions in the Arctic are imposed. If they’re successful, computer models would be able to model the transition between a time when ice reformed in the winter to a time when the ocean remained devoid of ice throughout the year.
Such a model also would offer insight into what could happen in our future. Currently, about 70 percent of sea ice disappears during the summertime before reforming in the winter.
“We’re trying to understand what happened in the past but with a very keen eye to the future and the present,” White said. “The piece that we’re looking at in the future is what is going to happen as the Arctic Ocean warms up and becomes more ice-free in the summertime.
“Will we continue to return to an ice-covered Arctic in the wintertime? Or will we start to see some of the feedbacks that now aren’t very well represented in our climate models? If we do, that’s a big game changer.”
CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Gifford Miller also is a co-author of the study. Researchers from Northwestern University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research also were involved in the study, which was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
-CU-[includeme src=”http://c1n.tv/boulder/media/bouldersponsors.html” frameborder=”0″ width=”670″ height=”300″]