Weekly Wave: Student-Led Symposium Celebrating EarthWeek

Earth Day is an annual event that takes place on April 22 and strives "to diversify, educate and activate the environmental movement worldwide." In celebration of Earth Day, we reflect on EarthWeek, a student-led symposium held March 25-April 2. Every spring, graduate students in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences (SEES) participate in EarthWeek. SEES is comprised of the departments of Environmental Science, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, Geosciences, Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, School of Geography and Development, Arizona Institutes for Resilience, Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, and the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. This year, 37 students shared their research on wide-ranging topics such as water resources, geoscience, environment and society, ecology, weather and climate, and soil physics. The event also included a live Lightning Talk competition with graduate students participating from each department. The virtual round-table discussions on "Environmental Racism 101" and "What Does it Mean to Be an Environmental Scientist" were well-attended and stimulated engaging discussions. Although EarthWeek was primarily virtual, it included two socially-distanced events in the field in which 50 SEES students joined forces to clean up a section of the Tucson Arroyo Chico Wash and remove invasive fountain grass from the Saguaro National Park.