NREL NEWS NOTES
NATURAL RESOURCE ECOLOGY LABORATORY
Colorado State University
No. 8 August & September 1994
Announcements
The "BIG MOVE" took place the week of August 22, 1994.
The new building is extremely nice and being enjoyed by all of the
NREL staff even though there are numerous details in need of completion.
The dedication for the NESB is scheduled for Thursday, September
22. The ceremony will be from 2:15-2:45 p.m. and tours from 3-5 p.m.
Open House hours are from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, September 23.
Everyone is welcome and invited to attend!!
Xiangming Xiao left NREL on September 12 to begin his postdoctoral
research in the Ecosystems Center, Marine Biological Laboratory,
Woods Hole, MA. He will be working with Dr. Jerry Melillo.
The offices for CSU's new Graduate Degree Program in Ecology are
located on the first floor in the west wing of NESB. Dan Binkley
is in A116, and the new GDPE secretary, Sarah Garey, can be found
in the mornings in A118. Drop by and say hello -- to keep Dan and
Sarah from getting too lonely, and to make sure GDPE benefits as
much as possible from NREL connections!
Indy Burke is teaching a new Honors course in Environmental Conservation
(NR120B), and is interested in attracting NREL researchers to help
out in providing field, lab, and computer experience to these budding
ecologists. Jill Baron has already taken the class to Rocky Mountain
National Park, and the students have begun a field experiment on
aquatic ecosystem function across an N deposition gradient from
the alpine to subalpine forest, then in a few weeks to agricultural
watersheds and urban effects. This is a great opportunity for getting
very high quality undergraduates involved in your research, and
for getting an annual, long- term dataset going! Call Indy if you
have interest!!
Andrea Rayte, a Master's student in RES and Yanqing Zhang, a visiting
Chinese scientist will be working with Jeff Welker and Andy Parsons
on ITEX related studies from both Niwot Ridge, CO and Toolik Lake,
AK.
Indy Burke is on the NSF Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
panel - they conducted site reviews the week of September 5.
Andy Parsons has returned from Toolik Lake, Alaska where he was
overseeing the initial year of the NREL-INSTAAR field experiment
(ITEX) addressing the impacts of changes in snow cover and warmer
summer temperatures on moist and dry tundra. Well done, Andy!!
Meetings
As part of a NSF International Program grant funded to Diana Freckman
(McMurdo LTER) and Debra Coffin (Central Plains LTER) at Colorado
State University, 16 Hungarian scientists representing a wide range
of speci8alties visited five LTER sites (Kellogg, Sevilleta, Niwot,
Andrews and the CSU CPER) in September to discuss management, analysis
and synthesis of long-term data. The final meeting under the grant
will be a workshop in February 1995 in Hungary to initiate and establish
research collaborations in the areas of biodiversity and climate
change.
Bill Parton will be presenting a paper at the Tenth Annual Clean
Air Conference in Estes Park on September 28. The paper is titled
"Nitrogen Deposits in the Rocky Mountain Tundra and Forests: Suspect
the Car".
Tim Kittel, Dennis Ojima and Dave Schimel attended the VEMAP Results
Workshop, August 4-6 in Knoxville, TN.
Bob Niles attended the ESA meeting in Knoxville, TN, August 7-11
and presented a poster by himself, D.W. Freckman and E.M. Courtright
titled "Changing Morphology and Identification Heroics: Constraints
on the Measurement of Nematode Biodiversity".
Tim Kittel presented a poster titled "A Physically Consistant
Data Base for Modeling Vegetation/Ecosystems Sensitive to Climate
Change: The VEMAP Data Set" at the ESA meeting in Knoxville, August
7-11.
The EOS Project Workshop was held August 21-22 at the University
of Colorado's Mountain Research Station, Nederland, CO. Attendees
from NREL were: Dave Schimel, Tim Kittel, Dennis Ojima, Dave Valentine,
Bill Parton, Bill Pulliam, By Brown, Becky McKeown, Monica Engle,
Brian Newkirk, Melannie Hartman, Rob Kremer, Arvin Mosier, and Mary
Scholes.
Indy Burke just returned from her last National Academy of Sciences
Committee to Review EMAP meeting, September 2-3 in Woods Hole, MA.
This has been a 3-year committee to review the EPA's 100 million
dollar program. The report will be forthcoming.
The CPER-LTER held a data management review on August 18. Drs.
Bill Michener of the J.W. Jones Ecological Research Center, James
Brunt of the University of New Mexico, and Terry Smith of UC-Santa
Barbara reviewed the data management system of the LTER and will
provide recommendations for changes in their final report.
Visitors
Dr. Imanuel Noy-Meir of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem visited
with LTER scientists August 2 and 3, and toured the long-term grazing
treatments at the CPER.
Dr. Joy Bergelson, a plant population geneticist from the Department
of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, visited the
LTER group August 23-26. Joy is a 1993 NSF Presidential Faculty
Fellow and has published numerous articles in Ecology, Oecologia,
American Naturalist, and others. On Wednesday, August 24, she presented
a special seminar titled "Spatial Heterogeneity and the Spread of
Resistant Weeds".
Dr. Nancy Huntly, Cedar Creek Natural History Area LTER, Idaho
State University, will present a seminar titled "The Effects of
Environmental Structure and Species Diversity" on Friday, September
16 at 12:00 noon in the NREL Conference Room, B215 NESB.
Dr. Shiou Pin Huang is on sabbatical for a year and will be working
in Diana Freckman's laboratory. He is visiting from the Department
of Phytopathology, University of Brasilia, Brazil.
New Employees
Linda Palmer has joined the LTER group as a secretary. Linda was
previously with the Public Relations Department. Her office is NR206.
Mohammed Kalkhan began working at NREL as a Research Associate/GIS
Specialist for the Landscape Gap Analysis Project directed by Tom
Stohlgren. Mohammed is a citizen of Iraq and recently completed
his Ph.D. in Forest Biometrics with application in Remote Sensing
and GIS. Welcome to NREL, Mohammed!
Grants Funded
NSF Equipment Award to: D. Schimel, G. Kelly, J. Welker, D. Valentine,
W. Parton, D. Freckman, B. Wunder, T. Holtzer, I. Burke and T. Elliott.
"An Isotope Facility to Study Atmosphere-Ecosystem Interactions".
Our facility will initially consist of a GC-IRMS (Gas Chromatograph-Isotope
Ratio Mass spectrometer) and sample preparation lines and related
equipment. The new facility will likely be housed in the new NESB
along with related laboratory facilities.
Bill Lauenroth and Indy Burke along with Osvaldo Sala from the
University of Buenos Aires, Argentina have a new 3-year project
funded by NSF entitled, "Constraints on Production and Decomposition
in Temperate Semiarid Grasslands". The research will be conducted
at the CPER and a site (Rio Mayo) in Argentina.
Project Progress Reports
Dave Valentine is in Saskatchewan, Canada (August 29- September
23) for the third (and last) BOREAS 1994 field campaign.
Bob Niles, Mark Easter, Shiou Pin Huang, and Mary Kratz are traveling
to the Univ. Calif., Riverside, to conduct the final sampling of
the USDA/Citrus Ecosystem Project, September 17-25.
Proposals Submitted
Diana Freckman submitted "Supplement to: The Ecology of Nematodes
in Antarctic Dry Valleys" to NSF/OPP.
Bill Hunt submitted a revised proposal titled, "Analysis of Changes
in Soil Carbon Balance" to USDA/ARS
Dave Schimel, Gene Kelly and Jeff Welker submitted a revised proposal
titled, "An Isotope Facility to Study Atmosphere- Ecosystem Interactions"
to NSF.
Jill Baron submitted "Operating Costs for Organizing the Ecological
Society of America 1995 and 1996 Annual Meetings" to ESA.
Frank Singer and Mike Coughenour submitted "Models of Metapopulation
Management" to NPS.
Bill Parton and Dennis Ojima submitted "Application of CENTURY
Model to Evaluate the Ecological Effects of Climate Change" to USDA/USFS.
Manscripts Published
Parsons, A.N., J.M. Welker, P.A. Wookey, M.C. Press, T.V. Callaghan,
and J.A. Lee. 1994. Growth responses of four sub-Arctic dwarf shrubs
to simulated environmental change. J. Ecology 82:307-318.
Wookey, P.A., J.M. Welker, A.N. Parsons, M.C. Press, T.V. Callaghan,
and J.A. Lee. 1994. Differential growth, allocation and photosynthetic
responses of Polygonum viviparum to simulated environmental
change at a high Arctic polar semi-desert. Oikos 70:131-139.
Milchunas, D.G., J.R. Forwood, and W.K. Lauenroth. 1994. Productivity
of long-term grazing treatments in response to seasonal precipitation.
J. Range Manage. 47:133-139.
Stapp, P., J.K. Young, S. VandeWoude, and B. Van Horne. 1994.
An evaluation of the pathological effects of fluorescent powder
on deer mice. J. Mammalogy 75:704- 709.
Lee, C.A. and W.K. Lauenroth. 1994. Spatial distributions of grass
and shrub root systems in the shortgrass steppe. Am. Midl. Nat.
132:117-123.
Personals
Bob Gilpin and Susan Smith would like to announce their engagement
with plans for a summer 1995 wedding. Congratulations Bob and Susan!!
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.
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