Madeleine Burns (she/her) is a PhD student at Dartmouth College where she studies climate science with a focus on large-scale hydrological changes in the Western US with the Climate Modeling and Impacts Group. She did her undergraduate at Princeton University where she studied environmental engineering.
“Despite my knowledge, however, nothing in college prepared me for communicating critical information to non-scientists,” Madeline wrote. “But I want to be a different kind of scientist….Ultimately, I believe that the Young Voices of Science program will help me become a climate scientist who can actually reach communities like the one I grew up in – the people who are affected most by environmental disasters – so I can empower them with the knowledge and understanding to stand up for our shared environment.”
Madeline certainly achieved her goal of reaching communities impacted by climate change through her outreach project. In her piece for The Telluride Times entitled “Dreaming in Vain of a White Christmas, she describes her experience of returning back to southwest Colorado for the holidays and finding no snow on the ground. At a ski resort close to her hometown, these conditions led to the launch of a labor strike. However, she thought that the underlying effects of climate change were still overlooked.
“After the clouds finally lifted on Christmas evening, I rode the gondola, ascending into a translucent coral sky,” Madeline writes. I snapped photos, trying fruitlessly to capture the ethereal alpenglow. I was reminded anew of the unique magic of this box canyon. How do we preserve what we love about Telluride, while adapting to less snow?” You can read Madeline’s full piece HERE.
