Posts tagged Texas
Boulder’s Valmont Bike Park to get BIG race
Mar 1st
Valmont Bike Park selected as host of 2014 USA Cycling Cyclo-Cross National Championships
Boulder’s Valmont Bike Park has been selected to host the 2014 USA Cycling Cyclo-Cross National Championships. The Cyclo-Cross National Championships is held in January and is expected to bring at least 1,500 athletes and even more spectators to Boulder. According to an Economic Impact Study from the 2009 Cyclo-Cross National Championships, the host that year, Bend, OR, reaped an economic benefit of $1 million from hosting the championships.
USA Cycling made site visits to the three finalist cities of Boulder; Austin, Texas; and Asheville, N.C. earlier this year. The committee visited Valmont Bike Park on Feb. 1. Austin was selected as the host of the 2015 Cyclo-Cross National Championships, and Asheville was selected as the host of the 2016 Cyclo-Cross National Championships.
“We had three outstanding bids, making the only logical choice to award all three communities,” said USA Cycling Managing Director of National Events Micah Rice. “The decision to award one-year contracts for the championships will also help foster cyclo-cross racing in three distinctively different parts of the country.”
“We are so proud that Valmont Bike Park was chosen to host the 2014 United States Cyclo-Cross National Championships,” said Kirk Kincannon, director of the Boulder Parks and Recreation Department. “This reiterates that we have a world-class park in our community, and we’re thrilled that this investment is paying off so quickly in terms of daily users, programming, events, and now as the host of a USA Cycling event. The Cyclo-Cross Championships should bring an estimated $1 million economic benefit to Boulder.”
“It is a real honor for Parks and Recreation to host this national event,” said Mike Eubank, Valmont Bike Park manager. “The Cyclo-Cross National Championships is like the Super Bowl of cycling. This is tremendous news for Boulder, and especially for all the local cyclists and bike organizations who have been involved in creating this one-of-a-kind bike park.”
“I’m incredibly proud of what our community has created at Valmont Bike Park, and hosting these championships is the next step in affirming the benefits of a dedicated bike park,” said Pete Webber, Valmont course designer and recent Masters World Champion.
For more information, visit www.usacycling.org or call Mike Eubank, Parks and Recreation, at 303-413-7226. Valmont Bike Park website: http://bouldermountainbike.org/valmontbikepark.
C.U. Team on a 2 Year effort to research environment factors
Jan 25th
Jan. 25, 2012
CU-BOULDER-LED TEAM TO ASSESS DECLINE OF
ARCTIC SEA ICE IN ALASKA’S BEAUFORT SEA
A national research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder is embarking on a two-year, multi-pronged effort to better understand the impacts of environmental factors associated with the continuing decline of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.
The team will use tools ranging from unmanned aircraft and satellites to ocean buoys in order to understand the characteristics and changes in Arctic sea ice, which was at 1.67 million square miles during September 2011, more than 1 million square miles below the 1979-2000 monthly average sea ice extent for September — an area larger than Texas and California combined. Critical ocean regions north of the Alaskan coast, like the Beaufort Sea and the Canada Basin, have experienced record warming and decreased sea ice extent unprecedented in human memory, said CU-Boulder Research Professor James Maslanik, who is leading the research effort.
The team will be targeting the Beaufort Sea, considered a “marginal ice zone” where old and thick multiyear sea ice has failed to survive during the summer melt season in recent years, said Maslanik of CU-Boulder’s Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research in CU’s engineering college. Such marginal ice zones are characterized by extensive ice loss and a strong “ice-albedo” feedback.
“Sea ice is lost when the darker ocean absorbs more sunlight in the form of heat in the summers, resulting in potentially thinner sea ice that re-forms the following winter,” Maslanik said. “This positive feedback between heat absorption by the ocean and accelerated melting becomes reinforcing in itself.” Marginal ice zones also are characterized by significant human and marine mammal activity, he said.
There was a record loss of sea ice cover over the Arctic in 2007, he said. “In some areas of the Arctic Ocean the multiyear ice rebounded, but in the Beaufort Sea we did not see that kind of multiyear ice persistence like we used to see,” said Maslanik, who also is a research professor in the aerospace engineering sciences department.
“The biggest question is whether places like the Beaufort Sea and adjacent Canada Basin have passed a ‘tipping point’ and now are essentially sub-Arctic zones where ice disappears each summer,” he said. Such ice loss could be causing fundamental changes in ocean conditions, including earlier annual blooms of phytoplankton, which are microscopic plant-like organisms that drive the marine food web.
The vast majority of climate scientists believe shrinking Arctic sea ice in recent decades is due to rising temperatures primarily caused by human activities that pump huge amounts of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The new $3 million study led by Maslanik, “The Marginal Ice Zone Observations and Processes EXperiment,” or MIZOPEX, is being funded by NASA.
The team will undertake extensive airborne surface mapping using a variety of Unmanned Aircraft Systems, or UAS, comparing the results with data collected by a fleet of satellites from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Japanese space agency. Unlike satellites, small, unmanned aircraft can fly below the clouds, observe the same location continuously for hours and make more precise measurements of sea ice composition and sea surface temperatures. Maslanik and his CU-Boulder team previously used unmanned aircraft to assess ice conditions both in the Arctic and in Antarctica.
The MIZOPEX arsenal also will include floating buoys that measure ocean temperatures. CU-Boulder engineering faculty members Scott Palo and Dale Lawrence and their graduate students are converting miniaturized versions of dropsondes — standard weather reconnaissance devices designed to be dropped from aircraft and capture data as they fall toward Earth — into the buoys that will be deployed by the UAS.
The modified dropsondes, which were developed at CU-Boulder for use in Antarctica, will be combined with CU-designed miniature unmanned aircraft that will land on the ocean near sea ice floes. Such floes are critical to several species of Arctic wildlife, including polar bears, walruses and seals.
The buoys and unmanned craft will collect sea surface and subsurface temperatures to about a meter deep, while the overflying unmanned planes and satellites measure temperatures at the surface, Maslanik said. “We want to know if the warming is just at the ocean surface or if there is additional heat getting into the mixed layers of the upper ocean, either from absorbed sunlight or from ocean currents, that could be contributing to sea ice melt.”
The team plans to gather information over 24-hour cycles to determine how the ocean and ice are reacting to atmospheric changes. “Understanding what’s happening in the water is critical to forecasting what will happen to ice in the near term, as well as in the decades to come,” said MIZOPEX team scientist Betsy Weatherhead of CU-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
“We’ve never had the data before,” Weatherhead said. “With this new instrumentation, we’ll be able to ask questions and test theories about the drivers of ice melt.”
The MIZOPEX effort involves CU-Boulder, NASA, Fort Hays State University in Kansas, Brigham Young University, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, NOAA, the University of Washington and Columbia University. Ball Aerospace Systems Group of Boulder also is collaborating on the project.
Other MIZOPEX project scientists from CU include Brian Argrow, Sandra Castro, Ian Crocker, William Emery, Eric Frew and Mark Tschudi. Argrow directs the CU-headquartered Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles, a university-government-industry partnership for the development and application of unmanned vehicle systems.
For more information on MIZOPEX visit http://ccar.colorado.edu/mizopex/index.html.
For more information on CU-Boulder’s Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles visit http://recuv.colorado.edu/.
CU Boulder study: Economy is making steady improvement
Dec 5th
IN 2012, SAYS CU LEEDS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
Colorado will continue on the road to recovery and add jobs in 2012 following a positive year in 2011, according to economist Richard Wobbekind of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business.
Wobbekind’s announcement was part of the 47th annual Colorado Business Economic Outlook Forum presented Dec. 5 by CU-Boulder’s Leeds School of Business.
Compiled by the Leeds School’s Business Research Division, the comprehensive outlook for 2012 features forecasts and trends for 13 business sectors prepared by approximately 100 key business, government and industry professionals.
“In 2012 we’re predicting slow but steady growth for Colorado, much like the U.S. economy,” said Wobbekind, executive director of the Business Research Division. “We’ll continue to add jobs in a wide array of sectors, but not at the dramatic rate that is necessary to significantly lower the unemployment rate.”
Overall, the forecast calls for a gain of 23,000 jobs in 2012, compared with a gain of 27,500 jobs this year. Most sectors of the Colorado economy are predicted to grow in 2012, including the addition of 2,900 jobs in construction, marking the first positive job growth in that troubled sector in four years.
When comparing the Leeds’ forecast to forecasts for other states, Colorado is expected to be in the top 10 states for job growth in 2012.
“The broader story here is Colorado entered the recession later, came out of the recession later and now appears to be accelerating past the rest of the country in terms of job growth and recovery,” Wobbekind said.
Even with positive job growth predicted for the state, Wobbekind said uncertainty at numerous levels still clouds the economic picture in the state and nation.
“The theme of almost every national forecast is uncertainty,” he said. “Every day there is a new event in Europe or a new event in Washington. So you continue to have all of these elements of uncertainty and they impact consumer confidence and household spending. That is something that is very hard to forecast or predict.”
The strongest sector for projected job growth in Colorado in 2012 is the educational and health services sector. The sector is expected to add 7,500 jobs in 2012.
In addition, other leading growth sectors for 2012 include the professional and business services sector with 6,800 jobs added and leisure and hospitality with 3,800 added..
On the agriculture side, Colorado farmers and ranchers are coming off what is expected to be a record-setting year for net farm income. Colorado’s agricultural producers benefited from unexpectedly strong market prices for livestock and crops in 2011, leading to an estimated record net farm income in the state of $1.7 billion. Historic drought in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas spared much of Colorado in 2011, leading to increased market prices for Colorado agricultural products.
“Mother Nature played a major part in this, and this year it played in our favor,” Wobbekind said, adding that Colorado agriculturalists also are expected to do well in 2012.
The manufacturing sector, after adding jobs in 2011 for the first time since 2003, will return to a long-term downward trend and is forecast to lose 1,900 jobs. Two other sectors expected to lose jobs are information, forecast to shed 500 jobs, and financial activities, losing 1,000 jobs.
In 2011, Colorado consumers spent more on goods and services, with retail sales increasing 6.5 percent for the year. In 2012, retail sales are forecast to remain relatively strong with a gain of 4 percent.
“We view the consumer as coming back to the table,” Wobbekind said. “Consumers have deferred a lot, including what we would call more necessary expenditures such as automobiles and other essential products that have been wearing out and need to be replaced.”
With 2011 coming to a close, Wobbekind said Colorado’s economy is ending the year on a positive note.
“We went into the year a little bit slow and then built up momentum for pretty much the entire year, and the last couple of months we’ve passed the national growth rate for jobs, and we’ll end the year above the national growth rate for jobs,” he said. “2011 was a decent year in which we added jobs in a fairly wide variety of sectors.”
Colorado’s unemployment rate for 2012 is expected to decrease from 8.7 percent at the end of 2011 to 8.4 percent, compared with a projected national unemployment rate of around 9 percent.
Colorado’s population is projected to grow 1.5 percent, or 75,900 people, in 2012.
To view the entire economic outlook for Colorado in 2012, including an overview of each of the state’s major economic sectors, visit http://leeds.colorado.edu/BRD and click on the Colorado Business Economic Outlook 2012 icon