After completing her Ph.D., Amy plans to continue research in the field of soil ecology and hopes to be involved in interdisciplinary approaches to ecosystem studies, such as the type of work done at NREL and in the LTER network. She will continue research on soil biodiversity and ecosystem function because she feels that understanding soil biology and processes is necessary in order to preserve the quality of our soils and the services they provide for future generations. Amy also enjoys teaching and would like to help make science, soil ecology in particular, interesting and accessible to students. Amy has given guest lectures on the ecology of Antarctic dry valley soils in undergraduate courses at CSU, as well as at Wageningen Agricultural University in The Netherlands, where she attended a two-week nematode identification course taught by Dr. Tom Bongers. Amy also co-hosted a workshop at CSU for undergraduate and graduate students, "Poster Presentations in the Biological Sciences," as part of a series of workshops arranged this spring by the organizing committee of the Front Range Student Ecology Symposium, of which she was a member. Amy served as the McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER graduate student site representative in 1997, and was awarded NCEAS graduate funding in 1996 to attend the opening symposium for the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) in Santa Barbara, California. This fall, she was awarded NSF funding to present her research at the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) International Biology Symposium in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Serita Frey is a doctoral candidate in the GDPE and a research associate at NREL. Her dissertation research, under the direction of Ted Elliott and Keith Paustian, examines how different agricultural management practices influence soil microorganisms, particularly bacteria and fungi, and how changes in the microbial community impact soil organic matter dynamics. Her research has included field observations collected from several long-term agricultural experiments located in the wheat and corn-growing regions of the U.S., as well as laboratory and field experiments designed to test specific hypotheses. Her experiments have examined soil moisture effects on microbial community composition; nitrogen translocation through fungal hyphae; and impacts of protozoan predation on carbon utilization patterns of bacteria and fungi.
 
Serita enjoys interacting with students and her goal is to integrate her research in soil microbial ecology with her interest in science education by teaching and providing research opportunities to students. Last fall, she co-taught a microbial ecology course with Dr. Donald Klein in the Department of Microbiology, and provided graduate students an integration of current concepts of microbial ecology in medical, engineering, environmental, and other areas. She also provided guest lectures for several undergraduate courses on topics including microbial diversity and evolution, sustainable agriculture, nutrient cycling, and soils as natural resources. She and fellow student Johan Six are currently participating in the master's research of Heleen Bossuyt and Karolien Denef, visiting students from Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium. Their research project examines the role that fungi play in the formation of soil aggregates.
 
Serita also participates in community outreach activities aimed at presenting ecology and, in particular, soil biology, to school children. This past spring she organized and taught a 6-week after-school ecology program at Irish Elementary. Activities included culturing microorganisms from a variety of schoolyard surfaces (rocks, grass, chalk, soil, student's ears and fingers) and collecting soil samples and using a microscope to get a close-up look at the worms and insects that the student's found in their samples.
 

Benjamin C. Balk, the recipient of the 1998-1999 NREL Graduate Student Fund Fellowship award, is an M.S. student in the Department of Earth Resources, working on geostatistical modeling of snow accumulation. With NREL advisor, Jill Baron and Kelly Elder, his Department of Earth Resources advisor, Ben's research focuses on mountain basins that provide natural water storage in the form of a snowpack. About 75% of streamflow in the western states results from snowmelt runoff. Ben conducted intensive snow surveys near peak accumulation in April 1997 and 1998 in the Loch Vale Watershed (LVWS) of Rocky Mountain National Park, and his data compares various interpolation methods that distribute point measurements of snow depth and density across the watershed. Ben has found that a combination of geostatistical and regression tree techniques produces the best estimates of snow water equivalence (SWE) distribution in LVWS.

Ben is originally from Montrose, Colorado, and received a Bachelor of Science in mathematics with a geology minor from the University of Notre Dame. He transferred to CSU from the University of Arizona, where he studied hydrology and water resources. Ben worked summers with the U.S. Forest Service as part of the trail crew, was involved in residential life on campus as judicial board commissioner and residence hall clerk, tutored and graded assignments in Mathematics, and volunteered his time with the Logan Center.

Ben anticipates completing his thesis in the fall of 1998, and is submitting a paper for publication in a Loch Vale Water Shed special section in Water Resources Research. He has another paper written with Kelly Elder and Jill Baron, "Using geostatistical methods to estimate snow water equivalence distribution in a mountain watershed," being published in the Proceedings of the 66^th Western Snow Conference. He was invited to present a poster at the International Conference on "Snow Hydrology: The Integration of Physical, Chemical and Biological Systems" in Brownsville, Vermont, October 6-9.
 

Heather Rueth received a prestigious EPA STAR Fellowship for Graduate Research. The three-year fellowship will be used toward Heather's Ph.D. research into nitrogen cycling and possible influences from atmospheric N deposition to old-growth spruce-fir forests of the Colorado Front Range. Jill Baron is Heather's thesis advisor.
 

Mohammed Kalkhan and Tom Stohlgren presented a paper entitled "Assessing the Accuracy of Landsat Thematic Mapper Classification Using Multiphase Sampling Design" at the 1998 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS '98): "Sensing and Managing the Environment," July 6-10, Seattle, Washington. Mohammed chaired the ecosystems session.
 
Tim Kittel, Jill Lackett, Dennis Ojima, and Carol Simmons attended the U.S. National Assessment Coordination Meeting entitled "The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change" in Monterey, California, July 26-31. Tim, an invited speaker and panel member, presented "VEMAP2 gridded climate time series for the U.S. National Assessment."
 
Arvin Mosier, USDA, Dennis Ojima and Bill Parton attended the working group meeting "Analysis and Synthesis of Trace Gas Fluxes II" at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California, May 26-27. Dennis and Arvin were the co-facilitators for the meeting.
 
Andy Parsons and Gina Adams traveled to the University of California, Davis, Bodega Bay Marine Lab, July 9-13. They worked with Diana Wall, a Bodega Marine Lab Distinguished Research Fellow at the time, on a number of papers and proposals.
 
Bill Parton and Mike Coughenour participated in the workshop "Interactions in Mixed Tree-Grass Systems" at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California, May 10-13. As group leader, Bill also participated in the U.S. Department of Energy's Integrated Assessment Global Climate Change Research Program proposal review meeting held in Washington, D.C., on July 15. Bill presented a talk on "Potential for Sequestering Carbon in Agricultural Soils" at the Energy Modeling Forum's workshop on "Climate Change Impacts and Integrated Assessment" in Snowmass, Colorado, August 3-9.
 
Keith Paustian attended a Stakeholder's Workshop on Carbon Sequestration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, June 22-23, and presented "Soil Sequestration of Carbon" at a plenary session. The meeting attendees included fossil fuel energy (utilities, gas and oil, coal) industry and focused on C sequestration technologies, including point source engineering approaches (e.g., removal and disposal of CO₂ from flue gases) and biological sequestration potentials. Keith also attended the All Investigators meeting for the KBS-LTER at Hickory Corners, Michigan, July 21-22, and presented results of cropping systems modeling work. Keith and Kendrick Killian later met with J.T. Richie and others at Michigan State University, July 22-27, to work on the SALUS cropping systems model.

Graduate student Johan Six presented an invited talk entitled "Carbon sequestration in no-tillage: a process-level explanation" to the Department of Agronomy and Range Science at the University of California, Davis, on July 27.
 
David Theobald presented a paper "A visual programming environment for spatial modeling: The ArcView Spatial Modeler extension" at the ESRI User Conference '98 in San Diego, California. Dave, Jim Zack, and Tom Hobbs presented Tammy Bearly's paper entitled "Disseminating natural diversity information using ArcView IMS: Design issues and technical considerations."
 
Amy Treonis and Andy Parsons attended an NSF-sponsored invitational workshop at the University of Illinois, Chicago, July 15-17, focusing on the impact of research activities on the perennially ice-covered McMurdo Dry Valley (MCMDV) lakes of Antarctica. The thirty-five experts in aquatic and antarctic terrestrial environments assessed the impact of past and current research activities on this ecosystem. Andy gave an invited presentation entitled "Soil research in the dry valleys--human disturbance and the possible effect on lakes." The workshop was followed by a meeting of the MCMDV Long-Term Ecological Research group PIs, where Amy presented a talk on "Invertebrate Diversity in the Soils and Sediments of Taylor Valley."
 
Diana Wall and Gina Adams organized a meeting of the Chairs and Scientific Advisory Committee of the Scientific Committee on the Problems of the Environment (SCOPE), Committee on Soil and Sediment Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning (SSBEF) June 12-14, hosted by Dr. Fred Grassle at The Marine Institute, Rutgers University, New Jersey. Plans were finalized for a workshop in October 1998, at Lunteren, The Netherlands, of 50 international scientists. This workshop will synthesize current knowledge on the "Interactions between belowsurface and above surface biodiversity; mechanisms, stability and global change." Diana and Gina also attended the SCOPE 10th General Assembly, at the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute, Rutgers, New Jersey, from June 14-20. The General Assembly reviewed SCOPE's achievements and discussed future directions for the next five years. Gina presented a report of the SSBEF Committee at the SCOPE Working Group of the Ecosystem Processes and Biodiversity Cluster, chaired by Jerry Melillo, president and coordinator for the ecosystem processes and biodiversity cluster.
 
Diana Wall organized and chaired the opening plenary symposium, "Biodiversity, Does It Matter to Nematologists?" at the 37th Annual Meeting of the Society of Nematologists, June 20, in St. Louis, Missouri. Speakers were Peter Raven, the Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, P. John D. Lambshead of the Natural History Museum, London, Daniel Brooks from the University of Toronto, and Diana. Diana's talk was entitled "Implications of Nematode Biodiversity for Ecosystem Functioning."
 

Vern Cole, Ted Elliott and Keith Paustian attended a joint U.S.-Canada workshop on "Carbon Sequestration in Soils," in Calgary, Alberta, May 21-22. The objectives of the meeting were to identify and summarize information on C sequestration in agricultural lands and outline future steps to address those needs. Vern facilitated the working group on "Carbon Storage Potential" and Keith facilitated the group on "Measurement, Monitoring and Verification." A white paper entitled "Carbon Sequestration in Soils" by J.P. Bruce, M. Frome, E. Haites, H. Janzen, R. Lal and K. Paustian was published by the Soil and Water Conservation Society.
 
Mohammed Kalkhan and Tom Stohlgren presented a paper "Linking multiphase, multiscale, and spatial cross-correlation to investigate plant diversity pattern in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado" at the Third International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, Quebec City, Canada, May 20-22.

Dennis Ojima and Chuluun Togtohyn organized and taught at a Land Use in Temperate East Asia (LUTEA) training workshop on "GIS/Remote sensing/modeling techniques for land use/cover change analysis," June 1-13, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The workshop, sponsored by the Asian Pacific Network and hosted by S. Khudulmur, Director of the Ministry for Nature and Environment of Mongolia, had five instructors and eighteen participants from Russia, South Korea, China and Mongolia. Dennis and Chuluun also participated in a LUTEA field trip for a transect survey for remote sensing ground truth studies for land use analysis, plant and soil analysis and biogeochemical sampling in Mongolia from July 5-22. Other U.S. participants included Larry Tieszen of the EROS Data Center, Jerry Dodd and June Rain of North Dakota Sate University, Jayne Belnap of Canyonlands National Park, and Cullen Robbins of Augustana College. Dennis also attended the opening ceremony and gave a lecture in the Training Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Management at the Southwest Agricultural University, Chongqing, China, on June 30.
 
Johan Six presented two papers entitled "Aggregate turnover and soil organic matter dynamics in agricultural soils: a link between temperate and tropical soils?" and "Soils and landuse in the Eastern region of South Vietnam" at the Sustainable Agriculture Development of the Uplands of South Vietnam Symposium, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, May 25-27.

Eduardo Mendonca from Brazil, via Purdue University, met with Bill Parton on June 22-23 about applications and instruction in the use of the CENTURY model.
 
Bob Paine, University of Washington, Perry Hagenstein, Massachusetts, and Tania Williams, National Research Council, Washington, D.C., spent two days in July at Bodega Marine Lab, California, working on an NRC Committee report with chair of the committee, Diana Wall.
 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Research Initiative (NRI) awarded John Gross, NREL, and Bruce Lubow, Department of Wildlife Biology, a three-year grant to study brucellosis in the Greater Yellowstone Area. They will collaborate with Mike Miller, Colorado Division of Wildlife, and Terry Kreeger to develop adaptive management strategies for controlling brucellosis in elk and bison throughout the ecosystem.
 
The U.S. Geological Survey awarded John Gross and Francis Singer a contract for $13,000 for their project, "Simulation modeling of management options for horses on the Pryor Mountain wild horse range; genetic consequences of population objective, removal strategy and contraception."
 
The Environmental Protection Agency funded Keith Paustian and Ted Elliott's "Quantifying Carbon Sequestration Potential through Improved Pasture Management" for three years with a budget of $336,246.
 
Francis Singer received a one-year extension of ungulate ecology studies in five national parks for $200,000 from the U.S. Geological Survey. Several of these studies are contracted through NREL, including the fourth and final year of funding for studies of elk herbivory and effects of elk on ecosystem processes in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.
 

Niall Hanan, "Characterization and Improvement of EOS Land Products," University of Nebraska, Lincoln/National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
 
Dennis Ojima and Bill Parton, "Regional Great Plains Assessment," Department of Energy.
 
 

June
Dave Bigelow, Helsinki, Finland
Mike Coughenour, Australia
Jim Ellis, Africa
Kathy Galvin, Tanzania, Africa
Dennis Ojima, Mongolia, China
Keith Paustian, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mass.
Jim Slusser, Plymouth Mass. and Helsinki, Finland
Tom Stohlgren, South Dakota
Dave Swift, Gunnison, Colo.
Diana Wall, Bodega Bay, Calif., Newark, N.J., and St. Louis, Mo.
 

July
Jill Baron, Bitteroot Mountains
Mike Coughenour, Australia and Nairobi, Kenya
Kathy Galvin, Tanzania, Africa and Williamsburg, Va.
John Gross, Baltimore, Md.
Dennis Ojima, Mongolia, China and Monterey, Calif.
Bill Parton, Snowmass, Colo. and Brazil
Keith Paustian, Michigan
Francis Singer, Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, Pryor Mountains, Wyo.
Tom Stohlgren, New Mexico and California
Dave Swift, Argentina
Dennis Ojima, Mongolia, China, Baltimore, Md., and Monterey, Calif.
Diana Wall, Bodega Bay, Calif., Chicago, Ill., Atlanta, Ga. and Florence, Italy
 
August
Jill Baron, Baltimore, Md. and Breckenridge, Colo.
Mike Coughenour, Baltimore, Md.
Ted Elliott, Montpelier, France
Jim Ellis, Kazahkstan
John Gross, Baltimore, Md.
Dennis Ojima, Baltimore, Md. and Seattle, Wash.
Bill Parton, Snowmass, Colo.
Tom Stohlgren, Tahoe, Calif. and Baltimore, Md.
Dave Swift, Gunnison, Colo. and Utah
Diana Wall, Baltimore, Md, Woods Hole, Mass., Dundee, Scotland, and Montpelier, France