NREL NEWS NOTES

NATURAL RESOURCE ECOLOGY LABORATORY
Colorado State University

No. 7 June & July 1994

Announcements

New Building Update:

The "BIG MOVE" is still scheduled for the week of Aug. 8th.

A team of professional movers will be moving us.

You need to be all packed prior to Aug. 8. The Allsteel furniture will not arrive until September, so we may have to borrow furniture from other offices for a while.

The new building dedication will be held Sep. 22 & 23. There will be guided tours of NREL both days of the dedication. We need to make sure we have everything picked up and the hallways clear.

The NREL Scientific Advisory Committee has been appointed and is tentatively scheduled to meet in February 1995. Committee members are: Gene Likens, Director, Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Cary Arboretum, Millbrook, NY; Tom Lovejoy, Asst. Sec. for External Affairs, Smithsonian Inst., Washington, DC; Pam Matson, Professor, Dept. Environ. Sci., Policy & Mgmt., Ecosystem Sci. Div., U. of California, Berkeley; Paul Risser, President, Miami University, Oxford, OH.

Jim Detling has resigned from the NREL Executive Committee. Many thanks for your help!

A retreat for NREL scientists and post docs will be held at the Marriott on July 27. Contact Diana or Ted for the latest agenda.

"NREL Field Day" is planned for July 22. There will be a field trip for interested persons to Loch Vale with a BBQ following at Vern and Jea Cole's home in Estes Park.

Kathy Galvin signed on the dotted line and now has a half-time tenure track position in the Anthropology Department.

David Valentine and Bill Pulliam are participating in the first 1994 BOREAS (BOReal Ecosystem Atmosphere Study) Intensive Field Campaign, measuring responses of CH4 and CO2 fluxes to experimental manipulations of C and N availability.

Gwen Scott resigned her position as NADP/NTN Database Manager, effective June 8. She has agreed to work a limited number of consulting hours over the summer and will pursue a 2nd bachelor's degree in computer science when classes commence this fall.

Xiao Xiangming successfully completed his dissertation defense on April 29. His dissertation is titled "Climate and Soil Texture Controls of Grassland Ecosystem Properties in Inner Mongolia from Patch to Regional Scales". His committee consisted of Drs. C. Bonham, Dennis Ojima, Bill Parton and Gene Kelly.

The Department of Agronomy has officially changed it's name to "Department of Soil and Crop Science."

Meetings

Bill Parton, Dennis Ojima, Ted Elliott and attended the First IGBP/GCTE (Global Change in Terrestrial Ecosystems) Science Conference held at Woods Hole, May 23-27. Bill is a member of the GCTE Science Steering Committee and Ted is a co-task leader (along with Vern Cole) for the soil Organic Matter Task. Presentations at the GCTE meeting were: (1) "Integrated models of ecosystem function" by W.J. Parton; (2) "Biospheric interactions with the hydrosphere and atmosphere" by D.S. Ojima, D.S. Schimel, W.J. Parton, S. Archer, L. Band, J.S. Baron, V.B. Brown, K. Hibbard, T.G.F. Kittel, R.A. Pielke, S.W. Running, C. Wessman and X. Xiao; (3) "Global change impacts on grassland ecosystems worldwide" by D.O. Hall, J.M.O. Scurlock, W.J. Parton, D.S. Ojima, T.G.F. Kittel, D.S. Schimel and M.B. Coughenour; (4)"Long-term dynamics of biomass and soil organic matter of grassland ecosystems in Inner Mongolia, China" by X. Xiao, D.S. Ojima, W.J. Parton, and Z. Chen; (5) "A physically consistent database for simulation of ecosystem/vegetation responses to global change: The VEMAP U.S. dataset" by T.G.F. Kittel, T.H. Painter, N.A. Rosenbloom, D.S. Schimel and D.S. Ojima.

Mike Coughenour traveled to Johannesburg, S. Africa and then to Tromsoe, Norway, June 17-July 4. He presented a 2½ day shortcourse in S. Africa on spatial process modeling. The course was organized through the Quantitative Conservation Biology Program of the U. of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, headed by Dr. Norman Owen-Smith. The course was taught just after a 2½ day course in frame-based modeling given by Dr. Tony Starfield. The venue for the course was a research facility in the lowveld near Kruger National Park. Over 40 high quality students attended, comprised of a mixture of students in the QCB program and resource managers from National Parks in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana. Mike then traveled to northern Norway to provide input on research being conducted by Dr. Ann-Marie Odasz

from Tromsoe Univ. She and her students are beginning to study the reindeer grazing ecosystems in the Finnmark region, which is also known as Lapland. Dr. Odasz will be returning to NREL this Fall as a visiting scientist.

Vern Cole, Keith Paustian and Dee Brendel organized a workshop of authors in the IPCC 1995 Assessment Chapter on "Mitigation Options in Agriculture" which was held on May 22- 28 at the Lory Student Center. The workshop concerned the "CO2 and Soil Carbon Balance" portion of the "Mitigation Options" chapter. Participants were: Dr. Ron Follett (USDA/ARS-Ft. Collins); Dr. Raj Gupta (India), Dr. John Kimble (SCC-Lincoln); Dr. Tatyana Kolchugina (Russia), Dr. Jeff Lee (EPA-Corvallis); Dr. Arvin Mosier (USDA/ARS-Ft. Collins); Dr. Wilfred Post (Oak Ridge Nat'l Lab); Prof. David Powlson (UK); Dr. Neil Sampson (Resources for Future), Dr. Dieter Sauerbeck (Germany); Dr. Charles Tarnocai (Canada); Dr. Holm Tiessen (Canada); Dr. Meine van Noordwijk (Indonesia), and Dr. Zhao Qiguo (China). Working groups were organized to deal with questions of Tropical/Temperate Land Use, Tropical/Temperate Biofuels, Tropical/Temperate C Sequestration, Data and Model Analysis, and Economic and Political Implications of Agricultural Mitigation.

Laura Powers and Diana Freckman attended the SCOPE meeting on Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) in Venice, Italy, May 30-June 3 and presented a poster on their research.

Kathy Galvin attended a 2-day workshop (June 13 & 14) in Washington, D.C., organized by the National Research Council that addressed for NSF research needs and center-like support for Human Dimensions of Global Change.

David Valentine participated in the 2nd half of the National Academy of Sciences Young Investigator Program in Arctic Ecology (joint with the Russian Academy of Science). He spent May 26-June 18 on the north slope of Alaska attempting to establish collaborative research in human-impacted arctic tundra. This is a continuation of last summer's trip to Russia.

Tom Kirchner presented a poster at the Health Physics Society meeting in San Francisco, June 27-30.

Dave Schimel, Tom Wigley (UCAR), and Tom Karl (NCDC) organized a UCAR/OIES Workshop on Data Sets for Terrestrial Biosphere Modeling held in Boulder, CO, May 9-11. Tim Kittel presented the keynote paper on "Development of large domain, multi-time resolution data sets for terrestrial biosphere modeling: The VEMAP database as a case study."

Tim Kittel and Dennis Ojima participated in the Second VEMAP (Vegetation/Ecosystem Modeling and Analysis Project) Results Workshop at Woods Hole, MA, May 21-22.

Bill Parton (member, McMurdo LTER Advisory Committee), Diana Freckman and Laura Powers attended the MCM LTER meeting in Reno, June 28-30.

Diana Freckman attended the meeting of the Advisory Committee for the Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, June 13-16.

Diana Freckman chaired the NRC Committee to review the Department of Interior's BEST program, July 11-13 in Irvine, CA.

Ted Elliott is giving an invited presentation at the 15th World Congress of Soil Science (ISSS meeting), July 10-16 in Acapulco, Mexico.

Tom Kirchner is chairing a session of the Summer Simulation Conference on Environmental Modeling and presenting a paper on Risk Assessment Modeling in San Diego, July 17-20.

Jim Gibson will attend the World Meteorology Organization meetings July 22-28 in Geneva, Switzerland to present a paper at the "Experts in UV-B Measurements" Workshop.

Visitors

Dr. Nico Van Breemen, Professor of Soil Science, Department of Soil Science and Geology, Wageningen Agricultural University, Wageningen, The Netherlands presented a joint seminar (NREL/Dept. Crop and Soil Sci.) on June 23 titled "Sphagnum as Manipulators of Their Environment". Dr. Van Breemen is spending a sabbatical at the Institute for Ecosystem Studies at the Carey Arboretum and visited CSU for a few days. He has been heavily involved in the development of the Decomposition and Global Change Program as part of the European community. As a trained soil pedologist, he has recently been developing ideas on soil organisms and organic matter and how they relate to the larger picture within the Gaia Hypothesis.

Dr. Jack Barnes, USDA/CSRS and Paul Kapinos (USGS) visited with NADP staff and college administration July 5 and 6 to discuss recent changes in the future directions of the NADP project. They presented a seminar on July 5 outlining the history and evolution of the NADP program.

Dr. Ross Virginia, Chair, Environmental Studies, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, visited June 16-19 and worked on a proposal with Diana Freckman and Laura Powers.

Dr. Olof Andrén, Department of Ecology and Environmental Research, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden will be visiting NREL and presenting a seminar July 18-20.

Clifford Martinka, Section Leader for the Mountain Ecosystem Section of NBS, Glacier National Park, MT, will be at NREL to visit with Tom Stohlgren, Jill Baron and Frank Singer on July 14 & 15.

Dr. Professor Shou Pin Huang, University of Brasilia, Brazil will be spending a one-year sabbatical in the nematode ecology lab of Diana Freckman.

Svetlana Fortner received an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) award. She is from the University of California, Riverside and is working in Diana Freckman's nematode ecology lab on Antarctic research.

Elizabeth Lynn, an undergraduate at Dartmouth College is in Diana Freckman's nematode ecology lab during the summer doing research on the Antarctic Project

Mr. Joel Feldman, a high school student from Reno, NV will be visiting Diana Freckman's nematode ecology lab in July. Joel is an NSF awardee to Diana Freckman and Ross Virginia's NSF Antarctic project and will be going to Antarctic with them in January.

New Employees

Kendrick Killian joined NREL in June and will work as a programmer/systems analyst with Keith Paustian, Ted Elliott and Vern Cole on modeling management-climate-CO2 interactions in agroecosystems for DOE-NIGEC. Kendrick has a background in engineering and physics and worked for several years with Martin-Marietta in Denver. Welcome to the lab, Kendrick!

Bill Davis has recently joined the NREL as a Data Base administrator and programmer for the USDA sponsored Ultraviolet Radiation Monitoring Program. Bill has a varied background in programming, statistics, data base development and even wildlife biology. Most recently he has been involved in developing and implementing software for weather forecasting workstations for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) - a project which took him to a number of places around the world. Welcome to NREL, Bill!

John Zacharriasen has returned from Hawaii to work with Dave Valentine on the BOREAS project. Welcome back, John!

Grants Funded

Tom Hobbs received $575,000 from the CDOW to develop a system for conservation planning that forecasts impacts of changing land use on biological diversity.

Diana Freckman and Debra Coffin have been awarded 1 year of funding for the NSF-International Programs titled "Development of Hungarian-American Collaborative Research Efforts: Biodiversity and Long-Term Ecosystem Research Sites". U.S. participants are: Linda Blum, Deb Coffin, Diana Freckman, David Foster, Katherine Gross, Bruce Hayden, Nancy Huntly, Jack Lattin, John Magnuson, Bob Parmenter, Tim Schowalter, Bob Waide, and Terry Yates.

Diana Freckman's Anglo-U.S. Workshop on Soil Biodiversity to NSF has been funded. The purpose of this workshop will be to determine the feasibility and scale of one or many soil biodiversity inventories. It will bring together representative British and American scientific specialists on soil biodiversity at the British Natural History Museum.

Proposals Submitted

Tom Stohlgren and Mike Coughenour submitted "Landscape Gap Analysis" to NPS.

Bill Hunt submitted "Responses of Rangeland Grasses to CO2 and Herbivory" to USDA/ARS.

Mike Coughenour and Bill Parton submitted "Spatio-temporal Variabilities of CO2 and Water Vapor Fluxes from C3/C4 Perennial Grasslands-Ecosystem and Regional Scale Estimate" to DOE.

Jim Gibson and Dave Bigelow submitted "Development and Management of a USDA UV-B Monitoring Program" to USDA/CSRS.

Ted Elliott, Jack Morgan and Bill Hunt submitted "Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen Interactions: Ecosystem Responses and C Balance of Agricultural Ecosystems" to DOE.

Bob Woodmansee submitted "Assessment of Erosion and Sedimentation in the Rio Puerco Watershed, New Mexico: The Interaction of Climate, Land Use, and Human Factors as Causes" to USGS.

Bob Niles and Diana Freckman submitted "Integrated Research on Hazardous Waste Chemical Mixtures" to NIH.

Dennis Ojima and Jim Detling submitted a continuation proposal titled "Predicting the Effect of Global Change on Vegetation in Park Landscapes in the Central Grasslands Biogeographical Area" to NPS.

Bill Parton submitted "Ecosystem Dynamics in Hawaii" to NSF/Stanford University.

Ted Elliott and Keith Paustian submitted "Fungal Contributions to Soil Organic Matter Formation" to NSF.

Keith Paustian and Ted Elliott submitted "Environmental and Management Controls on Soil Structure and Organic Matter Dynamics" to NSF.

Mike Coughenour, Kathy Galvin and Dennis Ojima submitted "Disequilibrium, Dynamics and Diversity in Mongolia: Effects of Climate Variability on Ecosystems, Biological Diversity and Pastoral Land Use" to NSF/Winrock International.

Tom Stohlgren and Mike Coughenour submitted a revision of "National Parks Resource Bibliographies" to NPS.

Dave Swift submitted "Development of a Game Management Plan for the South Units of Badlands National Park" to NPS.

Bill Hunt, Jack Morgan and Dexing Chen submitted "Plant Competition and Ecosystem Responses to CO2 Enrichment and Nitrogen Limitation in a C3/C4 Perennial Grass Mixture" to NSF.

Tom Hobbs submitted "SGOP: A System for Conservation Planning" to Colorado DOW.

Diana Freckman submitted "Antarctic Dry Valley Nematode Communities: Establishment, Function and Response to Disturbances" to NSF.

Diana Freckman and Deb Coffin submitted a Supplement to "Development of Hungarian-American Collaborative Research Efforts: Biodiversity and Long-Term Ecosystem Research Sites" to NSF.

Jill Baron submitted "CREEP: Changing Relief and Evolving Ecosystems" to NASA.

Manscripts Published

Ojima, D.S., K.A. Galvin and B.L. Turner, II. 1994. The global impact of land-use change. BioScience 44(5):300-304. Ellis, J.E. and K.A. Galvin. 1994. Climate patterns and land- use practices in the dry zones of Africa. BioScience 44(5):340-349.

Riebsame, W.E., W.J. Parton, K.A. Galvin, I.C. Burke, L. Bohren, R. Young and E. Knop. 1994. Integrated modeling of land use and cover change. BioScience 44(5):350-356.

(NOTE: The series of papers included in the special issue of BioScience "Global Impact of Land- Cover Change" were developed from an ESA Symposium organized by Dennis Ojima, Kathy Galvin and Billie Turner in 1992)

Schimel, D.S., T.G.F. Kittel, D.S. Ojima, F. Giorgi, A. Metherell, R.A. Pielke, C.V. Cole, and J.G. Bromberg. 1994. Models, methods, and tools for regional models of the response of ecosystems to global change. In: R.C. Wood and J. Dumanski (eds.) Sustainable Land Management for the 21st Century. Agricultural Institute of Canada, Ottawa. 2:227-238.

Stohlgren, T.J., J. Baron, and T.G.F. Kittel. 1993. Understanding coupled climatic, hydrological, and ecosystem response to global climate change in the Colorado Rockies Biogeographical Area. Pages 184-200 in W.E. Brown and S.D. Viers, Jr. (eds.) Partners in Stewardship: Proceedings of 7th Conference on Research and Resource Management in Parks and on Public Lands. The George Wright Society, Hancock, MI.

Copeland, J.H., R.A. Pielke, T.G.F. Kittel. 1994. Assessing regional climate and vegetation change for the Central Grasslands biogeographic region: January 1992 climatology. Pages 411-413 in 6th Conference on Climate Variations, Nashville, TN. American Meteorological Society, Boston, MA. Rasmussen, P.E. and W.J. Parton. 1994. Long-term effects of residue management in wheat-fallow: I. Inputs, yield, and soil organic matter. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 58:523-530.

Parton, W.J. and P.E. Rasmussen. 1994. Long-term effects of crop management in wheat-fallow: II. CENTURY model simulations. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 58:530-536.

Chen, D.-X., M.B. Coughenour, A.K. Knapp, and C.E. Owensby. 1994. Mathematical simulation of C4 grass photosynthesis in ambient and elevated CO2. Ecological Modelling 73:63-80.

Shipley, L.A., J.E. Gross, D.E. Spalinger, N.T. Hobbs and B.A. Wunder. 1994. The scaling of intake rate in mammalian herbivores. American Naturalist 143:1055-1082.

Personals

Many of you may remember Cinda Liggon, who worked at NREL some years ago as a programmer, then left to go to medical school. Cinda has completed her training and has moved back to Fort Collins. She has opened an office for general practice and holistic medicine. Cinda is an easy person to talk to, and is open to consideration of non- traditional approaches to medicine. Her office is at 210 W. Magnolia, phone 224-4014.

Laura Powers is engaged to Dr. Jim McDonald, a Pediatrician in the Navy, stationed in Okinawa, Japan. They are planning a September 1995 wedding. Congratulations, Laura and Jim!!

The next edition of NREL News Notes will be an August/September issue and will be published the first week of September due to our moving into the new building.

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