Miriam “Mim” Pendleton ’78, research staff member in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, retires from the University of Vermont in April 2018. Mim dedicated more than two decades to monitoring and studying air quality and how it relates to forest health for the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative (FEMC), formerly Vermont Monitoring Cooperative (VMC). A site operator and outreach coordinator, she spent long hours monitoring and collecting air and precipitation samples at the FEMC’s field site located at UVM’s Proctor Maple Research Center in Underhill Center, Vermont.
A native of Ithaca, New York, Mim grew up on the Cornell University campus and was influenced by agriculture, the sciences, and her father, an entomologist at the university. Her artistic bent took her to UVM where she earned a degree in art in 1978. She did stained glass work at a company in Essex Junction, Vermont before becoming a stay-at-home mom and subsistence farmer. She and her husband John Drew, now a retired IBM engineer, raised three children, along with chickens, a horse, and a large garden at their home and small farm in Underhill Center.
Living only three minutes from the Proctor Research Center, in 1996, Mim began covering as a back-up at the air quality site for then site operator Joanne Cummings. Mim’s childhood immersion in the sciences resurfaced, and she took to heart VMC's mission to improve the understanding of long-term forest trends.
“It’s important to track pollutants and where they are coming from to try to mitigate them and shut down the sources,” said Mim. “We need the monotonous, repetitive sample collection to get a long-term record of what is happening to determine if policy implementation, such as the Clean Air Act, is working.”
And she added, “My children spent a lot of ‘quality time’ playing in the field at Proctor during their summer vacations from school.”
In 2001, Mim became the full-time site operator for FEMC. The Proctor site participates in several continental-scale air quality monitoring networks that provide data on atmospheric deposition. Mim maintained field instruments, collected samples, and conducted preliminary field analyses and sample preparation for shipment to various laboratories in the U.S. She monitored pollutants including nitrogen, mercury, and ammonium for the National Atmospheric Deposition Program, Atmospheric Integrated Research Monitoring Network, Vermont Acid Precipitation Monitoring Program, USDA UV-B Monitoring Program, Mercury Deposition Network, and Ambient Ammonium Monitoring Network, among others.
Mim sampled wet deposition, in the form of rain or snow, to test for acid rain precursor chemicals and major ions. She used a filter system to collect dry deposition for chemical testing, conducted passive sampling for airborne ammonium, and ran a mercury analyzer to speciate or delineate different forms of the element.
“Mim has been a stellar site operator at the air quality station,” said Sandy Wilmot, recently retired forest health specialist with the State of Vermont. “She was well known for her high quality work measuring air metrics and received accolades from regional networks singling out her dedication for detail and consistency over the decades she worked in Underhill.”
Mim was also responsible for dry deposition measuring equipment on the FEMC’s forest canopy tower at Proctor. The walk-up tower was originally installed in the early 1990s by former UVM research professor Tim Scherbatskoy and retired research technician Carl Waite to study ozone in the tree canopy. More recently, the tower supported mercury research by FEMC-funded scientist Eric Miller. Mim recorded meteorological data from instruments at the site and at four different levels on the tower which often required climbing to great heights above the trees year-round in less than ideal weather conditions.
She collected samples after each precipitation event, which some years was almost every day. When Mim first began measuring the acidity of rainfall at Proctor in 1996, she would get pH readings of 4.3, far on the acid side of a neutral pH of 7. Now in 2018, she is measuring a pH of 5.O and above.
“It’s an amazing progression,” she said, “and it shows our government regulations are working and are a friend to us and to the environment and our forests.”
“Mim also served as a local guide for individuals and groups interested in learning about air pollution effects on Vermont forests,” said Sandy. “She was a passionate advocate for clean air and could be counted on to voice her concern about air quality at any opportunity. She deserves our thanks for this.”
Jim Duncan, director of the FEMC said, “Mim’s dedication to the work of monitoring our forest ecosystems is nothing short of inspirational. When I arrived in 2012, Mim was an immediate mentor and colleague, valuing the input of everyone around her and never shying away from giving her own. Her tenacity and care in shepherding the Vermont Monitoring Cooperative through its transformation into the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative testifies to her commitment to the goals of the Cooperative, and we are much stronger for it. Her decades of irreplaceable contributions to monitoring our state’s forests will continue at the air quality site because of her work.”
In recent years, with a downturn in funding for atmospheric monitoring, Mim spent more time producing outreach materials for FEMC, working on their research and monitoring database, editing their annual monitoring update, and planning for the annual FEMC meetings.
“While Mim's contributions to understanding, monitoring, and sustaining Vermont's forested landscape were most obviously on display through her excellence in the lab and the field, Mim's role has actually been much larger,” said Jen Pontius, FEMC principal investigator. “Mim worked behind the scenes to help migrate the long-term VMC database to the forefront of data management standards and accessibility. She has been a ‘Jill of all trades,’ helping to expand the Cooperative, increase efficiencies, and evolve the organization to better meet the needs of the region's stakeholders. As the longest serving member of the Cooperative on staff, she is a direct connection to the passion that served as the catalyst for this organization and sustained it over the past 27 years. We will miss having her as both a respected colleague and friend.”
In retirement, Mim plans to garden, horseback ride, get back into stained glass work, enjoy her first grandchild on the way, and travel. She looks forward to a trip to Italy with her husband in the fall.