NOAA Environmental Hero from Utah Carries on Family Tradition
April 22, 2008
A fifth-generation Utah rancher combines the past, present, and future in her volunteer work to help NOAA monitor carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere. Beth Anderson of Callo, Utah, was named one of NOAA’s 10 Environmental Heroes today.
NOAA’s Environmental Hero Awards were established in 1995 to commemorate Earth Day by honoring volunteers who help NOAA carry out its mission — to understand and predict changes in Earth’s environment and conserve and manage coastal and marine resources to meet our nation’s economic, social, and environmental needs. The award program also raises awareness about NOAA’s volunteer programs.
“Thousands of people across the country join forces with NOAA each year and the Environmental Hero award is our way of saying ‘thank you’ to several of those individuals that have made a significant impact,” said retired Navy Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “Beth is an outstanding volunteer — she continues a family tradition that helps NOAA’s Boulder laboratory monitor the stat of our atmosphere.”
In the 1980s, Anderson’s father, David C. Bagley, started collecting air samples for NOAA from the family ranch, which includes Willow Springs, one of the last privately owned Pony Express stations. When Anderson moved back to the family ranch in 1995 with her husband, Don, and five children, she continued her father’s air sample collecting. Anderson is the fifth generation of her family to run the cow-calf operation since 1886.
The samples are sent to NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., where they are analyzed for concentrations of a variety of gases, including carbon dioxide and methane.
“Because of her conscientious efforts, NOAA has obtained a unique record of the ‘background’ levels of these climatically important gases in the remote western desert,” wrote Thomas Conway, a research chemist at NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division in Boulder, which collects and analyzes air samples from collection points across the globe. Conway nominated Anderson for the annual award.
Conway also noted that Anderson “frequently includes notes describing the sometimes harsh conditions in which she collects the samples ‘very, very hot,’ ‘ dusty,’ ‘rain (yeah!)’, ‘icy cold,” and then in May ‘beautiful spring day.’”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and information service delivery for transportation, and by providing environmental stewardship of our nation's coastal and marine resources. Through the emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), NOAA is working with its federal partners, more than 70 countries and the European Commission to develop a global monitoring network that is as integrated as the planet it observes, predicts and protects.
Contact: Jana Goldman, (301) 734-1123