NREL IN THE LIMELIGHT
NREL
Receives Designation as a Program of Research and Scholarly Excellence
Every
four years, CSU designates 14 Programs of Research and Scholarly
Excellence (PRSE). NREL submitted a proposal to this program
which was evaluated by the Faculty Council Committee on Research,
Scholarship and Graduate Education, the Council of Deans, the University
Distinguished Professors, the Provost and the Vice President for
Research and Information Technology (VPRIT). We are pleased to
announce that NREL has, for a second time, received this prestigious
designation. In a memo from the Office of the VPRIT, Tony Frank
stated “Designation
as a Program of Research and Scholarly Excellence recognizes the
very high quality of work being done by these programs and the
impact of their work throughout the state, nation and world. These
outstanding programs are areas where Colorado State has earned
world-renowned distinction. Your commitment to this program and
the excellence of the faculty associated with the program are truly
a credit to the institution and we congratulate you and your colleagues
on your success.” Thank you all at
NREL who have worked so hard to earn this award.
SPECIAL EVENTS
NREL Celebrates the New Francis Clark Conference Room
On February
26, members of the CSU community and family and friends of
Dr. Francis Clark attended a ceremony which marked the official
re-naming of NREL’s B215 Conference Room as the Francis Clark
Conference Room. This honor was bestowed to Dr. Clark for
his many contributions to ecosystem science, CSU, NREL, the College
of Natural Resources, Larimer County, and the City of Fort Collins.
The 93 year old Dr. Clark is a world renowned microbial ecologist
and recipient of the Agricultural Research Service’s Hall of
Fame Award and the Soil Science Society’s Distinguished Career
Award. He has authored several books and over 175 journal articles,
and has collaborated over the years with many NREL and CSU scientists.
Among many important contributions to CSU, Dr. Clark and his late
wife Evelyn established the Francis Clark Soil Biology Scholarship
fund at NREL, an endowment which has supported 13 graduate students
in environmental science since its inception in 1998. NREL is proud
to honor Dr. Clark in this way.
*Pictured L-R: Joyce Berry, Diana Wall, Francis Clark
Tom Hobbs selected as a Leopold Leadership
Fellow for 2004!
 Tom is one of 20 outstanding academic environmental
scientists from throughout the U.S. who have been selected as Aldo
Leopold Leadership Fellows for 2004. He joins previous NREL members
Dennis Ojima, Kathy Galvin, and Diana Wall in this honor. Diana
now serves as co-chair with Jane Lubchenco for the Leopold Fellows
Program. Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellowships provide scientists with
intensive communications and leadership training to help them communicate
scientific information effectively to non-scientific audiences,
especially policy makers, the media, business leaders and the
public. They are selected through a competitive application process.
They have outstanding scientific qualifications and have demonstrated
leadership ability and a strong interest in communicating science
beyond traditional academic audiences.
RESEARCH PROJECT NEWS
New
Grants
NASA and NOAA Award $3.7 Million for Environmental Research
to NREL
Two Federal agencies, the National Aeronautic and Space Administration
(NASA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),
have announced plans to support three separate global change
research projects at NREL. Two projects funded by NASA (“Carbon Data
Assimilation Modeling: Remote Sensing and Field Observational Constraints
of Earth System Carbon Analysis,” Dennis Ojima, PI, $1.45 million
over 3 years [detailed more on page 2 “Airborne Carbon”];
and “The Role of Africa in Terrestrial Carbon Exchange and
Atmospheric CO2: Reducing Regional and Global Carbon Cycle Uncertainty,” Niall
Hanan, PI, $1.05 million over 3 years) will investigate carbon cycle
dynamics and variability in North America and Africa, to determine
how terrestrial vegetation ameliorates, or contributes to, increasing
atmospheric CO2 concentrations. A third project (Biological Fingerprinting
of Biodiversity in the Western United States, Tom Stohlgren, PI,
$1.2 million over 3 years) will focus on the relationships between
biodiversity hotspots in North America and invasive non-native species.
The two North American research projects were funded by NASA’s
Earth Science Enterprise to use NASA satellites, together with other
forms of geospatial data and simulation models, to address two of
the most pressing global change issues for the United States: 1)
How do U.S. ecosystems contribute to the uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere,
sometimes called the “missing sink;” and 2) how can we
predict where and when invasive plants, animals and diseases will
occur relative to hotspots of diversity of native plants and animals?
Niall Hanan’s project, which is jointly funded by NASA
and NOAA, will also investigate the carbon cycle, but with a
particular focus on Africa, to examine how climate variability,
drought and human management contribute to carbon uptake and
release by the continent, and thus the role of Africa in global
atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
The Airborne Carbon in the Mountains Experiment Project: NREL,
CU, and NCAR scientists are participating in the first airborne
study of carbon fluxes in the Rocky Mountains. They will measure
fluxes over the state of Colorado using the NCAR C-130 research
aircraft during April, May, and July. NREL scientists, together
with CIRA scientists, developed the models of atmosphere and biosphere
that are being used in planning and analyzing the airborne data.
The project is supported by NSF Biocomplexity (Dave Schimel, NREL/NCAR;
Dennis Ojima, NREL, and Russ Monson, CU - Co-PIs: “Carbon
Sequestration in Complex Landscapes”) and by NASA IDS
(Dennis Ojima and David Schimel, PIs: “Carbon Data Assimilation
Modeling: Remote Sensing and Field Observational Constraints
of Earth System Carbon Analysis”).
Stephen Ogle (NREL) was awarded $99,907 from the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency for a one-year project entitled “Agricultural
Land Use and Management Impacts on Agricultural Soil Organic C:
National Inventory Reporting and IPCC Inventory Guidelines.”
Jill Baron (NREL/USGS), with three USGS colleagues, and Rich Conant
(NREL) were funded by USGS Science Impact funds to conduct a two-year
project entitled “Taking America’s Pulse: Development
and Application of Human and Environmental Indicators using an
Analytical Problem-solving Tool.”
Kathy Galvin (NREL/Anthropology) and Dennis Ojima recently received
funding for a developmental proposal from NSF for one year to write
a full proposal to study “Household Decision Making Under Uncertainty.” Other
participants include: Michele Betsill (Dept. of Political Science,
CSU), Randall Boone (NREL), Robert Harriss, Emilio Moran, Compton
Tucker, K.S. Rajan, Tom Veldkamp, and Jill Lackett (NREL).
Ongoing Research News
Geneva Chong (NREL/USGS) is presently working
on three U.S. Geological Survey Central Region Integrated Science
Program (CRISP) research projects: “Management of Mancos Shale
Lands in Colorado” and “Effects
of Coalbed Methane Development in the Powder River Basin, WY” with
Paul Evangelista (NREL) and Bureau of Land Management cooperators;
and a project with the Rosebud Sioux, SD, looking at the distribution
of ceremonial plants on their lands. In addition to providing
science for resource management, the CRISP is designed to foster
interdisciplinary research.
Global Land Project Update: The Global Land Project is jointly sponsored
by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the
International Human Dimension Programme (IHDP) and was recently reviewed
at meetings in Moscow and Bonn, respectively. As a result, the science
plan is being revised and should be finalized this summer. The scientific
steering committee will be selected during the next few months with
the approval of IGBP and IHDP. The proposed International Project
Office is still being developed.
New From UVB
The UV-B Monitoring and Research Program has recently
launched a climatologic site in Seguin, Texas and a research site
in Lamar, Colorado.
The Seguin site, overseen by renowned scientific expert Forrest
Mims, provides a great transect between two of UVB’s southern
sites (at Big Bend, Texas and Baton Rouge, LA) and helps monitor
ultraviolet changes due to the equatorial air mass that comes
up from the tropics.
UVB is also working with John Harton, Director for the High Energy
Physics Group at CSU, to set up the Lamar Community College site
for monitoring air quality. The site consists of a Vis-Multi Filter
Rotating Shadowband Radiometer and a UV-Multi Filter Rotating Shadowband
Radiometer to provide continuous aerosol optical depth (AOD) data
to the CSU Physics Department project competing for the Ultra-High
Energy Cosmic Rays project of the international Pierre Auger Observatory.
Our AOD data will be used to verify the cleanliness of the air in
the region, as the absence of aerosols and other contaminants is
crucial to the successful detection of these Ultra-High Energy Cosmic
Rays. If the atmosphere is clean enough, this southeastern Colorado
area could become the northern hemisphere component of the Pierre
Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory, with the southern hemisphere component
currently under construction in the Pampa Amarilla region of Argentina.
If the Lamar site is chosen as the northern hemisphere component
of the Auger Observatory, the region would benefit economically and
would become an epicenter for a world class research science project.
APPOINTMENTS
Keith Paustian (NREL) was selected
as a lead convening author (LCA) for the 2006 IPCC Guidelines
for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. He will be one of the
three LCAs for “Volume 4: Agriculture,
Forestry, and Other Land Uses.” In addition, Stephen
Ogle and John Brenner (USDA-NRCS and NREL) were selected as
lead authors from the U.S. for Volume 4 of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines
for the National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.
NREL Research Associate Gary Wockner has been chosen as one of four
Colorado conservationists to serve on the Colorado Gray Wolf Management
Plan Working Group assembled by the Colorado Division of Wildlife.
The purpose of this group is to develop a Wolf Management Plan necessitated
by the expectation that wolves will enter Colorado in the near future.
Wolves have been reintroduced to Wyoming and New Mexico and have
also been spotted in Utah. In 1996, Wockner wrote his PhD thesis
on wolf management at Isle Royale National Park. Since then he has
worked on various research projects with many agency staffers and
ranchers who will also be a part of this working group. Wockner is
an advocate for reintroducing wolves into Colorado.
Tom Hobbs served on the David Smith Fellowship panel for the Nature
Conservancy in March.
Jill Baron was guest editor for a Forum in Ecological Applications
14 (2004) on Research in National Parks.
OUTREACH AND SPECIAL MEETINGS
In January, Mike Coughenour and Dave
Swift (NREL) were invited to participate in a workshop in Iran
entitled “Conservation
of the Asiatic Cheetah” organized by Taghi Farvar and
Jamie Everett of the Iranian Non-Governmental Organization,
Center for Sustainable Development (CENESTA). The cheetah,
which once ranged across the Middle East from Saudi Arabia
to India, now remains only in Iran where its population is
estimated to be about 50 individuals. Mike and Dave were invited
because of their experience in systems in which conflicts between
pastoralists and wildlife threaten the livelihood of one or
both, as is the case in Iran with the cheetah. Mike presented
a primer on the SAVANNA modeling system and Dave discussed
non-equilibrium dynamics in arid rangelands. CENESTA is interested
in continuing a relationship with NREL through a collaborative
research project on the ecology of pastoral systems in Iran.
Dennis Ojima, NREL scientist and New Research on Population and
Environment panel member, attended a National Research Council
(NRC) sponsored workshop in January on “Research on Population, Land
Use, and Environment” in Irvine, California. The purpose
of the workshop was to evaluate progress on population, land
use, and environmental research linkages and to recommend steps
for further scientific development. Numerous presentations were
given, including those from NREL colleagues Pam Matson, Myron
Gutmann, and Emilio Moran. Dennis is also co-author of the NRC
workshop report.
Following this meeting, Dennis traveled to Tashkent, Uzbekistan
to attend the International Workshop on “Global Change, Sustainable
Development and Environmental Management in Central Asia,” sponsored
by the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN), Global
change SysTem for Analysis, Research, and Training (START), MEDIAS-France,
UNDP/Government of Uzbekistan Environment Programme (Atrof Muhit),
and the State Committee for Nature Protection of the Republic of
Uzbekistan. Dennis gave two presentations, one for the START Secretariat
and a second entitled “Land Use and Climate Change Interactions
of Eurasian Ecosystems.” He also chaired the session on
land use, regional ecosystems, and biodiversity. The purpose
of the workshop was to investigate potential research studies
to enhance ecosystem management and sustainable ecosystem dynamics.
Dennis also attended the "Rangelands of Central Asia: Transformations,
Issues and Future Challenges” Symposium at the Society of Rangeland
Management in Salt Lake City in January. He presented “Socio-economic
and global change impacts on rangeland productivity of the Eurasian
Steppes of the Mongolian Plateau and Kazakhstan.” Also
present were co-authors Togtohyn Chuluun (Mongolia), Sayat Temirbekov
(Kazakhstan), Carol Kerven (UK), and Boldyn Bolortsetseg (Mongolia),
as well as Julia Klein (NREL) and former NREL alums Lindsey Christensen,
Xu Lan, and Y.Q. Zhang.
In April, Dennis Ojima participated in the “Learning from
the National Assessment Workshop” in Washington, DC. The
purpose of the workshop was to distill lessons to be used in
designing the next assessment from the recently completed (NAST
2001) National Climate Change Assessment.
In February, Mike Coughenour (NREL) traveled to Serengeti National
Park, Tanzania, and Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya, to participate
in a workshop for the development of a proposal for continued collaboration
between these two protected areas and Yellowstone National Park.
Robin Reid (ILRI/NREL) participated in the Mara meeting. The project
will be funded by the USAID Global Livestock CRSP, with Lisa Graumlich
of Big Sky Institute, Montana State University as PI. The accommodation
consisted of a tented camp, erected by Kerr and Downy specifically
for the workshop. The tents were spacious, with queen sized beds,
showers, and even flushing toilets! Of course, the wildlife was spectacular!
In April, Mike Coughenour traveled to Ouarzazate, Morocco, to participate
and present a paper at the conference in which the results of the
IMPETUS project were presented. IMPETUS is an EU funded project to
German principal investigators, in which they are studying the impacts
of hydrological alterations (damming) in the Draa River Watershed
in southern Morocco. This involves indirect impacts on land use and
grazing by pastoralists in the region. There is interest in using
Mike's SAVANNA model to help conduct the necessary integrated assessments
of such impacts.
Mike also traveled to Almaty, Kazakstan, in May to present a paper
and participate at the “Desertification and Recovery in Central
Asia Conference.” Mike has conducted research on this project
(DARCA, funded by the European Union to Roy Behnke of McCaughley
Land Use Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland), involving
the use of remote sensing data (NDVI) to assess vegetation biomass
changes in the pastoral areas of Kazakstan and Turkmenistan that
might have been in response to the political reforms that have
occurred since the breakup of the Soviet Union. This research
was originally planned to be carried out by the late Jim Ellis,
NREL. Due to the long history of collaboration between Jim and
Mike on this kind of research, mainly in East Africa, Mike was
selected to complete the work. The study site is located on the
south side of the Atlas Mountains, and spans a large area that
extends to the northern edge of the Sahara Desert.
Jill Baron took part in a program at Colorado College in May to
unveil the 2004 Rockies Report Card. Other speakers included Ed and
Betsy Marston, Charles Wilkinsen, Tom Sisk, and Former Governor Richard
Lamm.
Randy Boone (NREL) attended a workshop sponsored by the Global Livestock
CRSP and the British Embassy in Kazakhstan in April, to help local
goat farmers produce higher quality cashmere. He also gave a detailed
presentation to the Botanical and Phytointroduction Institute in
Almaty, Kazakhstan on Gap Analysis, the U.S. program that promotes
biodiversity conservation by keeping common species common.
Tom Hobbs gave the following featured presentations: “The
New Statistics in Ecology: Examples from the Study of Chronic Wasting
Disease in Mule Deer Populations” at the National Science Foundation
in January; a seminar entitled “Dynamics of Chronic Wasting
Disease in Colorado Mule Deer Populations” at the School of
Fishery and Aquatic Science of the University of Washington in January;
and “The Devolution of Adaptive Management” at the
Adaptive Management of Fish and Wildlife Populations workshop
in Umea, Sweden in April.
Diana Wall participated in a review of the Duke University Department
of Biology in March. In April, she was an invited speaker at
the International Symposium on “Impacts of Soil Biodiversity on
Biogeochemical Processes in Ecosystems: International Workshop on
Molecular Methods in Soil Biological and Biochemical Diversity in
Terrestrial Ecosystems,” Taipei, Taiwan. Diana also participated
in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, as a Coordinating Lead Author
for the “Implications for Achieving the Millennium Development
Goals” chapter in Montreal, Canada; and she attended the
Council of Scientific Society Presidents meeting in Washington,
DC as past chair.
Greg Newman (NREL) presented a status report to the Semantic Prototypes
In Research EcoInformatics (SPIRE) Workshop in Berkley, California
to update the group on the status of the invasive species forecasting
service. SPIRE is an NSF funded project to develop semantic web technologies
designed to facilitate the data mining capabilities of the web for
ecological data purposes. This project is a cooperative project with
our NASA grant for the invasive species forecasting service.
GRAD STUDENT NEWS
In April, DeAna Nasseth was
invited to present “What Ecologists
Do: Definitions and Careers” to 200 students at Eagleview Middle
School in Colorado Springs. She solicited and received “ecology
in action” photographs from ecologists worldwide to integrate
as part of the presentation. The students were very attentive,
and hopefully, inspired to consider a career in ecology.
Catherine Crosier (Tom Stohlgren, advisor) successfully defended
on March 8, “Data synergies and invasive plant species distributions
in Colorado.” She graduated spring semester and is now
working at the USGS.
VISITORS
Amory Lovins, Chief Executive Officer, Rocky Mountain Institute
(http://www.rmi.org/) met with NREL scientists in April. He
conducted an open discussion covering such topics as global climate
change, shifts in agricultural practices due to food safety issues,
and RMI environmental policy recommendations made to US government
agencies. Mr. Lovins is an experimental physicist educated
at Harvard and Oxford. His work focuses on transforming the automobile,
real estate, electricity, water, semiconductor, and several
other manufacturing sectors toward advanced resource productivity.
He has briefed sixteen heads of state, held several visiting
academic chairs, authored or co-authored twenty-eight books
and hundreds of papers, and consulted for scores of industries and
governments worldwide.
In May, Tom Stohlgren and his group hosted partners from NASA and
other institutions for an Invasive Species Forecasting System (ISFS)
Science Team Meeting. Two days of presentations and break-out groups
were hosted at the US Geological Survey Fort Collins Science Center,
and the first version of the web-based ISFS was released to the group
for testing. Informal meetings at the NREL included a session for
the identification of tamarisk study sites in Colorado and Utah where
hyperspectral satellite data will be collected in conjunction with
ground-based work.
Dr. Richard Bardgett, University of Lancaster and Dr. Jim Garey,
University of South Florida, Co-PIs of Diana Wall’s new
NSF project, Global Patterns of Soil Biodiversity: Implications
for Ecosystem Function, visited NREL in February.
Visiting scholars from Central Asia came to NREL for ecosystem analysis
of carbon dynamics and land use change. Sayat Temirbekov from the
Laboratory of Geobotany of the Institute of Botany and Phytointroduction,
Kazakhstan Ministry of Education and Science, visited in March to
continue spatial analysis of ecosystem dynamics in the abandoned
cropland areas of northern Kazakhstan. He worked with Dennis Ojima,
Randy Boone, Mike Coughenour, and Kathy Galvin during his four week
stay. Muhtor Nasyrov from the Plant Physiology and Microbiology Department,
Samarkand State University, Uzbekistan is visiting NREL to work with
Dennis on modeling analysis of tower flux data from the Samarkand
research site.
PEOPLE
Julia Klein has come to NREL as a NOAA Climate and Global
Change Postdoctoral Research Fellow. She is working with Dennis
Ojima to couple modeling and remote sensing with her detailed field
studies to further understand interactions among climate variability,
pastoral land use change and ecosystem dynamics on the Tibetan Plateau.
Julia received her BA from Cornell University and her MS and
PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. She investigated
the effects of climate warming and pastoral land use change on
carbon cycling, biodiversity and rangeland quality on the northeastern
Tibetan Plateau for her dissertation research.
Augustus (Gus) Conant, son of NREL research scientist Rich and his
wife Beth, arrived on 3/18.
GIFTS TO NREL
NREL is deeply grateful to the many individuals who
have made initial contributions to our new Excellence in Enhancing
Global Connections endowment. This ambitious endowment will be
used to support bridge salary for scientists and other costs and
opportunities which cannot be accommodated by NREL’s base of federal grant
funding. It is expected to be a very important part of NREL’s
future operations. Every dollar donated to this endowment by individual
NREL supporters is being matched by an anonymous donor, making
this a one-of-a-kind opportunity to enhance NREL’s future.
Over $60,000 has been raised so far. If you are interested
in contributing to this exciting new endowment, please contact
Neil Shropshire (970-491-5645 or neil@nrel.colostate.edu) for more information.
NREL is also grateful for the continuing support given by donors
to the James Ellis Scholarship Fund, which will support students
interested in human dimensions of global environmental change, and
to the general NREL gift fund, which supports a variety of efforts
beneficial to NREL.
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