NREL NEWS NOTES

No. 1 November 1993

• Announcements
• Meetings
• New Employees
• NREL Seminars
• Visitors
• Fellowship/Grant Opportunities
• Graduate Student News
• Grants Funded
• Project Progress Reports
• Proposals Submitted
• Manuscripts Published
• Personals
• Open Positions
• Previous NREL News Notes

Announcements

Vern Cole has accepted the position of convening lead author for a chapter on Mitigation in Agriculture for the 1995 Assessment, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Diana Freckman will represent the NREL at the Assoc. of Ecosystem Research Centers meeting 11/1&2 in Washington, DC. The AERC is composed of 40 ecosystem research centers in the US.

Ted Elliott has been appointed chairperson of a CSU Agric. Exp. Sta. strategic planning initiative on Plant Ecosystems. The group decided to develop a campus wide Center for Ecosystem Science and Management. Bill Hunt and Bill Parton are also on the committee and others at NREL have been involved. The process is well on its way.

Bill Parton and family are spending 4 months in Brisbane, Australia. Bill is exchanging modeling techniques with Australian colleagues for developing improved methods for cropping management in sugar cane and cereal crops and in improved pasture systems. The Parton family will vacation at the Great Barrier Reef and in New Zealand before returning to the States. Bill will be back in his office on Jan. 3.

Indy Burke received her NSF Presidential Faculty Fellowship Award last week in an official ceremony. Indy met President Clinton and Vice President Gore! Only 12 such awards are made nationally across all fields of science. This is a very prestigious award which gives Indy discretionary funds of $100,000/yr for 5 years.

Welcome to Jeff Welker, Keith Paustian and Deb Coffin who are new members of the NREL Scientific Staff.

Meetings

Diana Freckman, Bob Niles, and John Moore attended the Bodega Bay Field Conf. at the U. California Marine Reserve, 10/21&22. Drs. Niles and Moore presented papers.

Diana Freckman, President of AIBS, will be in Washington, DC, for the AIBS Board meetings 10/25 and again 11/7. She, Tom Lovejoy (Past Pres.) and Hal Mooney (Pres.-Elect) will be planning the AIBS/ESA meeting in Knoxville.

Ted Elliott was the GCTE/IGBP rep. at the Steering Committee meetings 10/21-25 in Washington, DC for the Int'l Workshop "Management of Carbon in Tropical Soils Under Global Change: Science, Practice and Policy", sponsored by ISSS, GCTE/IGBP, TSBF, ICRAF and UNEP to be held in Nairobi, Kenya, 2/7-11, 1994.

A conference entitled "Integrated Regional Models for Metropolitan Areas: Development of a Conceptual Model" was held at the NREL 10/16- 19. Sponsored by NSF. Participants included: M.J. McDonnell, U. Connecticut; R.V. Pouyat, USDA For. Serv.; Peter Groffman IES; Steward Pickett, IES; Trudy Ann Camron, UCLA; Susan Doerr, SU; and Roger Pielke and Lenora Bohren, CSU.

Martin Fowler and Rusty Scott will attend a UNIX Conference in Monterey, CA, 10/30- 11/5.

Visitors

Dr. Rusty Rodriguez, U.S. Dep. Fish. and Wildl. Biol., Seattle, visited the Freckman group for 4 days to discuss field plans for the Antarctic field season in Dec. Dr. Rogriguez presented a seminar co-sponsored by the Dep. Fish. and Wildl. Biol. and NREL.

Dr. Jerry Olson, Oak Ridge National Lab, visited with Dr. Vern Cole on 10/19 to discuss global carbon cycling.

Dr. Michael R. Raupach, CSIRO, will be visiting with scientists at the NREL and Atmos. Sci. at CSU, NCAR and CU 11/14-17. Please contact By Brown to arrange to meet with Dr. Raupach.

Dr. W.M. Post, Oak Ridge National Laboratory was here at NREL 10/26-10/27 doing some collaborative research on the EOS project with D. S. Ojima.

New Employees

Jason Conde (freshman - pre vet) and Brian Schipper (freshman - Forestry) have been hired to work in Freckman's lab.

Dee Brendel will be coordinating the move to the new building. She is currently working on the moveable equipment list.

Grants Funded

The C&N Analyzer proposal submitted to the Agric. Exp. Sta., has been approved. The proposal was submitted by Drs. Binkley, Burke, Covich, Elliott, Freckman, Lauenroth, Stednick and Trlica for the CNR; Drs. Barbarick, Kelly, Peterson, and Westfall from the Agric. Sci., and Dr. Detling from Nat. Sci. This will be located and operated at NREL.

The project "Ecosystem Measurements at Rocky Flats" was recently funded. Elliott, Valentine, Reuss and Frey are involved. Analysis of samples from Rocky Flats will determine potential future impacts during clean-up operations and allow comparison of ecosystem properties and processes across the 4 different ecosystem types being sampled. The project is a 1-year contract with a high probability for a 5- year beginning next year.

Project Progress Reports

During Aug. the first 3 UVB monitoring stations were installed at existing Quantitative Links sites by personnel from SUNY with the assistance of Jim Gibson, Dave Bigelow and Bill Durham. The 3 sites are at Howland Forest 20 miles north of Bangor, ME; the Agric. Exp. Sta. of Miami U at Oxford, OH; and Bondville, IL near Champaign.

Proposals Submitted

None

Manscripts Published

Cole, C.V., K. Paustian, E.T. Elliott, A.K. Metherell, D.S. Ojima and W.J. Parton. 1993. Analysis of Agroecosystem Carbon Pools. Water, Air, Soil Poll. 70:357-371. Cole, C.V., K. Flach, J. Lee, D. Sauerbeck, and B. Stewart. 1993. Agricultural sources and sinks of carbon. Water, Air, Soil Poll. 70:111- 122.

Carter, M.R., W.J. Parton, I.C. Rowland, J.E. Schultz and G.R. Steed. 1993. Simulation of soil organic carbon and nitrogen changes in cereal and pasture systems of southern Australia.

Freckman, D.W. and C.H. Ettema. 1993. Assessing nematode communities in agroecosystems of varying human invention. Agric. Ecosys. Environ. 45:239-261.

Overhoff, A., D.W. Freckman and R.A. Virginia. 1993. Life cycle of the microbivorous Antarctic Dry Valley nematode Scottnema lindsayae (Timm 1971). Polar Biol. 13:151-156.

Van der Knapp, E., R.J. Rodriguez and D.W. Freckman. 1993. Differentiation of bacterial- feeding nematodes in soil ecological studies by means of arbitrarily-primed PCR. Soil Biol. biochem. 25:1141-1151.

Yeates, G.W., T. Bongers, R.G.M. de-Goede, D.W. Freckman and S.S. Georgieva. 1993. Feeding habits in soil nematode families and genera--An outline for soil ecologists. J. Nematol. 25:315-331. Ojima, D.S., W.J. Parton, D.S. Schimel, J.M.O. Scurlock, and T.G.F. Kittel. 1993. Modeling the effects of climatic and CO2 changes on grassland storage of soil C. Water, Air, Soil Poll. 70:643-657.

Ojima, D.S., B.O.M. Dirks, E.P. Glenn, C. E. Owensby and J.O. Scurlock. 1993. Assessment of C budget for grasslands and drylands of the world. Water, Air, Soil Poll. 70:95-109.

Fellowship/Grant Opportunities

Two Ford Foundation fellowships are available: the Predoctoral and Dissertation Fellowship for Minorities (application deadline 11/5/93) and the Postdoctoral Fellowship for Minorities (application deadline 1/7/94). Announcements are posted on the board by Room 131.

Funding Opportunities

The Nature Conservancy has issued an RFP for their Ecosystem Research Program. Pre-proposals were due 10/30/93; the next deadline for pre-proposals is 6/30/94. Additional information is available from Arlene.

The Great Plains Regional Center of the National Institute for Global Environmental Change (NIGEC) has also issued an RFP for FY 1994/95. A letter of intent must be submitted by 11/5/93, and proposal deadline is 12/3/93. This RFP is from Dr. Easterling's office - copies are available at NREL from Arlene.

Personals

Jim & Jean Gibson with and their daughter and son-in-law are vacationing in Australia. Jim will be back in his office 11/22.

Susan Smith's son Jesse, whose assault in City Park resulted in the removal of his spleen, is doing fine and is back in school.

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