WABI interviews Ph.D. candidate developing climate resilience policy
WABI (Channel 5) spoke with Kimberley Rain Miner, an Earth and climate sciences Ph.D. student at the University of Maine, about her work developing policy to build climate resilience. For her doctorate, Miner is developing a framework to assess the threat of pesticides — including DDT and other persistent organic pollutants — that for years were trapped in glaciers but are entering watersheds due to melting. “I’m interested in looking at the cascading climate impacts that aren’t necessarily foreseen,” said Miner, a Department of Defense Scholar. “So for example, things like DDT and PCB’s that are trapped in glaciers, if they melt out it’s possible that we will not have high-quality glacial melt water before we even lose the reserves of glaciers that we have. So it’s something that we need to understand and look at before it becomes a problem.” Miner hopes to develop a model that analyzes the risk of downstream communities which could be impacted by polluted glacial melt waters, WABI reported.