NREL NEWS NOTES

No. 4 March 1994

• 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

Dr. Gene Likens, Inst. of Ecosystem Studies, The New York Botanical Garden, Millbrook, NY, will be at CSU for the 1994 Distinguished Ecologist Lecture Series, Apr. 5-7. NREL will host a Coffee Social, with group discussion following, for Dr. Likens from 10-12 a.m., Apr. 6, in the Conference Room. Please plan to attend.

David Schimel presented a White House Science briefing in the Vice President's Ceremonial Room in the Executive Office Building, Washington, DC, which addressed the global carbon cycle, and the role of terrestrial ecosystems in controlling future atmospheric concentrations of CO2, and strategies for stabilizing atmospheric CO2. Those in attendance were: Vice President Al Gore; Councellor Tim Wirth of the State Department; Alice Rivlin, Deputy Head of the Office of Management and Budget; Jack Gibbons, Presidential Science Advisor; Bob Watson, Deputy Science Advisor for The Environment; Katie McGinty, Dep. Asst. to the Pres. & Dir., Office of Environmental Policy; James Baker, head of NOAA; Mike McElroy of Harvard and Tom Wigley of UCAR.

Ted Elliott and Vern Cole have accepted the positions of co-task leaders for the IGBP/GCTE (see NREL News Notes No. 2 under Osvaldo Sala for explanation) Soil Organic Matter Task Group. This is part of the Agriculture Focus and Soils Activity within the GCTE core group. Ted established the scientific steering committe of the SOM Task Group at the Nairobi Tropical SOM Workshop. One of their first objectives is to obtain funding for a NATO Advanced Research Workshop on data-model comparison for temperate research sites in North America, Europe and Australia.

Indy Burke has hired Becky Riggle as a Research Associate to work on her NSF Presidential Faculty Fellowship.

Tom Kirchner has been appointed to the Dose Reconstruction Committee of the National Council on Radiological Protection and Measurements. The NCRP is a non-profit corporation chartered by Congress to collect, analyze, develop and disseminate in the public interest, information and recommendations about protection against radiation and the measurement of radiation. The Council is made up of nationally recognized scientists who share in the belief that significant advances in radiation protection and measurement can be achieved through cooperative effort.

In January, Ted Elliott assumed responsibilities as Editor-in-Chief for the journal "Geoderma." He was appointed to fill a perceived gap in the more ecological side of the journal. So, please, consider submitting your manuscripts to Geoderma, where you will have a sympathetic ear.

Meetings

Tom Kirchner lectured on uncertainty analysis at the workshop "Pathway Analysis and Risk Assessment for Environmental Compliance and Dose Reconstruction" at Kiawah Island, SC, Feb. 28-Mar 4. This is the 3rd such workshop and is aimed at providing the participants with an extensive review of the state of the art in risk assessment and dose reconstruction.

Carol Simmons led a 2-day workshop on the analysis of long-term trends in NADP/NTN data at EPA facilities at Research Triangle Park, NC. The meeting was co-sponsored by the NADP and the EPA. Dave Bigelow, with Molly Welker as co-author, presented a paper on "Trends in Sulfate Bias in the NADP/NTN." Statisticians and scientists from the US and Canada attended. A workshop proceedings is being produced.

Kathy Galvin served on the Anthropology Panel for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program in Washington, DC, on Feb. 7-9.

Ted Elliott, Peter Motavalli and Keith Paustian attended an international workshop Feb. 7-11 in Nairobi, Kenya, on "The Management of Carbon in Tropical Soils Under Global Change: Science, Practice and Policy." Ted helped organize the meeting as a member of the steering committee and will be the senior editor of the proceedings volume. Presentations will be published as papers, most likely in "Geoderma." Ted will summarize the methods and modeling aspects of the workshop for an invited paper to be given at the International Soil Science Society meeting in Acapulco, July 10-16, which will be published in the ISSS proceedings. Keith gave a paper at the workshop on "Integration on Information and Understanding to Predict Soil C Distribution at the Regional Scale" and Peter Motavalli participated as co-author on a paper entitled "Management Control of SOM Dynamics in Topical Land-Use Systems." Now they see why the Turkana Project people have been going back there for 10 years!!

Diana Freckman attended the AIBS Board meeting Feb. 5-7 in Wash., DC, and the Association of Ecosystem Research Centers Board Meeting Feb. 26- 28, again in DC.

Jill Baron sponsored the 3rd Periodic Loch Vale Watershed/Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical

Budgets Meeting which was held on Feb. 17 in the NREL Conf. Room. NREL Project attendees were: J. Baron, M. Wotawa, M. Welker, B. Newkirk, T. Stohlgren, J. Back, B. Sanford, D. Cline, and J. Sueker. From CU: M. Williams and P. Brooks. USGS: J. Turk, A. Mast, N. Spahr, D. Campbell, G. Aiken, R. Harnish (for D. McKnight), D. Clow, G. Ingersoll, R. Striegl and S. Bachmann. Also: H. Rouse, Supr. RMNP; K. Czarnowski, Res. Manage. Spec., ROMO; T. O'Shea, Asst. Center Dir., NERC; K. Tonnesson, NBS and R. Herrmann, NBS.

Indy Burke is attending a SCOPE Conference in Asilomar, Calif., Feb. 27-Mar. 4, on Ecosystem Function of Biodiversity. She will present a paper on the importance of biodiversity at landscape and regional scales.

Mark Wotawa and Molly Welker attended a winter mountaineering course sponsored by the American Avalanche Institute in Crested Butte, Colo., during the week of Feb. 7. Ben Riebau, Loch Vale Watershed workstudy student, attended an avalanche safety course at CSU in January.

Bill Parton attended the National Research Council Meeting for the Commission on Geophysical and Environmental Data in Washington, DC, Feb. 15-17.

David Valentine and Bill Pulliam attended a BOREAS & NIGEC Co-PI Workshop in Lincoln, NE, Feb. 27-Mar. 2, to discuss plans for upcoming field season.

Visitors

Huang Jianhui, Dept. Plant Ecology, Inst. Botany, Chinese Acad. Sci., Beijing, China, will be sponsored by Jill Baron and Dan Binkley to study streamside willow and alder ecology, nutrient cycling and productivity in alpine and subalpine wetlands of Rocky Mountain National Park from March 1994 to March 1995.

Bob and Mary Scholes from South Africa will be visiting NREL from Apr. 94-Sep. 94 to work with Bill Parton, Dennis Ojima and Arvin Mosier on model development and NO flux measurements.

NOTE: They are looking for housing for that period of time - please call Becky Techau (X 1-1988) if you know of any available housing.

Beth Cline, Coordinator, BLM Global Change Data Center, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, will be visiting BLM project leaders and attending a BLM meeting scheduled for Mar. 2-6.

Dr. Andy Parsons, Dr. Malcom Press and Ms. Jacqueline Potter from The Center for Arctic Biology, University of Manchester, England are visiting Jeff Welker and NREL. They will present seminars and research data synthesis possibilities.

Grants Funded

Carol Simmons obtained funds for the first NADP-sponsored report on long-term temporal trends in NADP/NTN data. The report will be a collaboration by scientists from the Illinois

State Water Survey, Penn. State, and the NADP/NTN Coordination Office at NREL.

Tom Kirchner & Bill Alldredge have been funded to expand an ongoing ecological risk assessment project at Los Alamos National Lab. Terry McLendon and Ed Redente (Range Sci.) are collaborators on the project. The project considers the risks from depleted uranium and some heavy metals on a firing range at the site, and is being used as a mechanism for developing methodologies in modeling and assessment practices that can be applied to ecological risk assessment in general.

Francis Singer received funding from NPS for a project entitled "Management of Ungulate Populations in Two Rocky Mountain National Parks" for $648,000. Approx. 31% of the funds will go to NREL for research in RMNP by Singer, Coughenour and Welker, while about 9% of the funds will go to J. Detling for continued work in Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area.

Francis Singer received funding from the National Park Service for a project entitled "Restoration of Bighorn Sheep to 17 Rocky Mountain National Parks" for $819,000. Singer will serve in an advisory role only on this project.

Project Progress Reports

Dave Valentine, Bill Parton and Dave Schimel submitted the BOREAS progress report to NSF entitled "Field Micrometeorological Measurements, Process-Level Studies and Modeling of Methane and Carbon Dioxide Fluxes in a Boreal Wetland Ecosystem."

Jill Baron submitted the 1993 Loch Vale Watershed Long- Term Ecological Research project annual report to the National Park Service and National Biological Survey. Copies are available from Jill.

Proposals Submitted

Diana Freckman is co-PI on a proposal with Jim Reynolds, Duke University, which was submitted to DOE/NSF/USDA Collaborative Research in Plant Biology Program and is titled "Phytotron 2000 Project: Collaboration Group for Addressing Critical Needs in Controlled Environment Research."

Keith Paustian submitted "Source and Synchrony as Controls on N Leaching in Fertilized and Manured Crops" to USDA- CSRS/Michigan State University.

Francis Singer and Mike Coughenour submitted a proposal to NBS titled "Data Analysis and Report Preparation for NBS Research."

Dave Swift submitted "SANREM CRSP Annual Workplan- NREL-Modeling Activity and Related Topics" to University of Georgia/USAID.

Keith Paustian submitted a proposal to USDA/CSRS titled "Analysis of Production, N Dynamics and Profitability in Complex Cropping Systems."

Diana Freckman submitted a revised proposal to NSF/Desert Research Inst. titled "McMurdo Dry Valleys: A Cold Desert Ecosystem."

Tom Kirchner submitted a Supplement proposal to Los Alamos National Lab titled "Development of Ecological Models of Risk Assessment Methodologies."

Bill Parton submitted a continuation proposal to Stanford University/NSF titled "Experimental Tests of Ecosystem Dynamics Along Developmental, Climatic and Biotic Gradients in Hawaiian Montane Rainforest."

Francis Singer submitted a proposal to National Biological Survey titled "Effects of Genetic Heterozygosity on Reproductive Performance and Metapopulation Modeling in Mountain Sheep."

Francis Singer, Jeff Welker, Mike Coughenour, Dave Valentine and Ted Elliott submitted a proposal titled "Ungulate Plant Interactions in 5 Rocky Mountain National Parks" to the National Biological Survey.

Manscripts Published

Cambardella, C.A. and E.T. Elliott. 1994. Carbon and nitrogen dynamics of soil organic matter fractions from cultivated grassland soils. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 58:123-130.

Coffin, D.P. and W.K. Lauenroth. 1993. Successional dynamics of a semiarid grassland: effects of soil texture and disturbance size. Vegetatio 110:67-82.

Valentine, D.V., E.A. Holland and D.S. Schimel. 1994. Ecosystem and physiological controls over methane production in northern wetlands. J. Geophysical Res. 99:1563-1571.

Fellowship/Grant Opportunities

A number of people at NREL were involved in a pre-proposal entitled "An Isotopic Facility for the Study of Atmosphere- Ecosystem Interactions" and it has been chosen to go forward as a full proposal to the NSF Academic Research Infrastructure Program. NREL scientists involved are: Jeff Welker, David Valentine, David Schimel, Bill Parton, Dennis Ojima, Ted Elliott, Diana Freckman, Keith Paustian, Indy Burke and John Gross.

Personals

Martin and Darlene Fowler are the proud parents of Anna Kristina born Feb. 22. She weighed 6 lbs. 10 oz. and was 19½ inches long. CONGRATULATION MOM & DAD!!

The NREL NEWS NOTES will be published the first week of each mo. Give your news items to Kay by the last Monday of each month.