December 2010
DGE at the AGU Meeting
The following people are presenting Posters & Talks at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Dec. 13-17.
POSTERS
George Ban-Weiss Understanding the Climate Consequences of Evapotranspiration Changes: A Theoretical Perspective.
Kyla Dahlin; Greg Asner Integrated airborne lidar and multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis.
Steve Davis Future CO2 emissions from existing infrastructure (?)
Chris Doughty, Chris Field; Adam Wolf Biophysical feedbacks between the Pleistocene megafauna extinction and climate: The first human induced global warming?
Rebecca Hernandez; M. F. Allen. High-resolution mycorrhizal hyphae dynamics: temporal variation, biophysical controls, and global environmental change.
Doug MacMynowski; H. Shin; Ken Caldeira; D. Keith. Can we test geoengineering?
E. Tziperman; D. G. MacMynowski Testing and Improving ENSO Models by Process using Transfer Functions.
Kelly McManus Climate induced shrubland greening in northern Quebec over the Landsat era.
Ted Raab et al. What comes up...must come down: Peat carbon and mineral-interactions in Arctic Coastal tundra.
TALKS
Joe Berry Implementation of forest allometry in combined models of carbon cycle processes and reflectance properties of forest canopies: First steps toward a system for data assimilation of the carbon cycle at regional and continental scales. (Invited).
Ken Caldeira A Paleo Perspective on Climate Change Commitment and the Future of the Oceans. & Adaptation to Impacts of Greenhouse Gases on the Ocean (Invited).
Long Cao Carbon sequestration and atmospheric CO2 removal: climate consequence and long-term commitment.
Julia Pongratz Relevance of Preindustrial Land Cover Change and Emissions for Attribution of Excess Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.
Ted Raab Availability of Fe(III) for Anaerobic respiration across an Age Gradient of Drained Thaw Lake Basins in the Arctic Coastal Plain.
Both Greg Asner and Scott Loarie are among the authors of two additional talks.
Global Ecology - Plant Biology Holiday Party
This year's party may have surpassed all others in terms of participation. About 150 people signed up, but practice from previous years may have helped Kathi Bump and her team organize a very festive party in spite of accommodating so many during this wet, chilly evening. The Bob Murphy Jazz Trio provided great jazz music, and Santa and his elf distributed gifts to all the children. Kathi also presented Carnegie Service Pins to Bi-Huei Hou (Frommer lab), Eva Huala (Director of TAIR) and Sue Rhee for 10 years of service, to herself for 15 yrs, and to DGE Director, Chris Field for 25 yrs. A sampling of Susan Cortinas' photos may be seen below or on: http://picasaweb.google.com/susancortinas/CIWXMasParty121010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJjbwu-GxMPcVQ&feat=email
Field & Berry Groups
Dec. 6: Kelly McManus 
(Grad. Student) practiced her poster presentation for the upcoming AGU Meeting titled Climate Induced Tundra and Forest Greening in Northern Quebec over the Landsat Area. Kelly and her colleagues analyzed Landsat data between 2002 & 2009. They found that greening correlated with a warming trend and was greatest in the tundra biome with shrubs expanding into the tundra.
Tasting: In honor of the Season, Kelly brought us milk and decorated cookies. The ginger cookies were the most flavorful, but all were attractive.
Asner Group
Dec. 3: Eben Broadbent shares a new publication lead by Angelica Almeyda
in Conservation & Society titled Deforestation Drivers in Southwest Amazonia: Comparing Smallholder Farmers in Iñapari, Peru, and Assis Brasil, Brazil. In this study she uses extensive household questionnaires, multi-temporal remote sensing and modeling to gain insights into the environmental and socioeconomic drivers of deforestation and land use dynamics in the Madre de Dios, Peru and Acre, Brazil regions, an Amazonian frontier undergoing rapid infrastructure development.
Dec. 13: Greg Asner with Robin Martin announce a new paper that looks at a detailed chemical and spectral assembly of a high-diversity forest canopy in lowland Amazonia. It is also a test of the Spectranomics concept that they first published in Frontiers in Ecology and Environment last year. Next up will be a few group papers covering the Neotropics, then on to results from global tropical forests. See New Phytologist (2010)
doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03549.x
Dec. 26: Greg Asner announced a Chapter titled Remote Sensing of Fractional Cover and Biochemistry in Savannas with Shaun Levick & Izak Smit in the book Ecosystem Function in Savannas, edited by M. Hill and N. Hanan.
Dec. 31: Asner announces a major update to the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) website. It now has new videos, imagery and links to its publication request system. “Research Highlights” offer short stories covering recent or ongoing airborne activities that support basic ecological science, conservation, resource management, and climate policy decisions. They have also added a special video summarizing new plans to bring the CAO and Spectranomics programs together with the launch of CAO-2 in 2011.
CAO website: http://cao.ciw.edu
Spectranomics: http://spectranomics.ciw.edu
Dec. 12: A Memorial Celebration and Scientific Symposium was held at the
Stanford Alumni Center for Stephen Schneider (2/11/1945 – 7/19/2010) where many DGE members attended and some took part. Steve had been a mentor and supporter of our Department from its inception as well as advisor to a number of our students. Chris Field moderated a Roundtable of Speakers, Bill Anderegg spoke as a student, and both Bill & Michael Mastrandrea were part of a musical tribute.
Dec. 15: Kate Dreher thanks everyone so much for their generous
contributions to the 2010 Carnegie Charity Collection. As you can see in the link below to the album, we collected FIVE LARGE BOXES worth of goods. In addition, we're still counting the coins, including a bag of them from DGE that weighed over 4 pounds(!), but we know that we managed to collect over $250! We used that money to buy 10 gift cards of $25 each with 5 for Target and 5 for Visa. The small additional amount over $250 will be sent to Ecumenical Hunger Program in East Palo Alto as a check as soon as the coins get turned into the bank. For photos see < 2010 carnegie charity collection >
Jan Brown, Editor, Email: jbrown1@stanford.edu
Click on photos to enlarge.