June 2010

Asner Group

June 2: Greg Asner announces a new paper that reviews the state-of-knowledge on drought impacts in the Amazon basin.It addresses in detail the controversy regarding whether forest canopies in the Amazon “green up” during drought.  The evidence is varied and difficult to confirm at scales ranging from single leaves to the entire forest. This paper, along with others on biodiversity and carbon response, is the fuel bringing the CAO-2 to the humid tropics for most of its operations. It also makes the case for the NASA HyspIRI mission, which is designed to quantify canopy chemical and physiological responses to climate change. The title is "Drought impacts on the Amazon forest: the remote sensing perspective." Published in the New Phytologist (2010).

June 14: Greg Asner reports that a technical paper is just out on the spectroscopy of plant biochemicals in tropical tree species. See J. Quantitative Spectroscopy & Radiative Transfer 111 (2010) 1947-57 by Feilhauer, H., G. P. Asner, R. E. Martin, & S. Schmidtlein. Also, check out the Spectranomics website, which is constantly being updated.  There you will find expanding coverage of the species database and our continuing field campaigns worldwide.  Most recent additions include Osa, Costa Rica; Huampal, Peru; Lambir, Malaysia; two forests in Madagascar; and the lower Madre de Dios River, Peru.  Several of the best photos in the Gallery on Madagascar were taken by our Spectranomics mobile lab coordinator, Loreli Carranza. http://spectranomics.ciw.edu

June 8-13: Luis Fernandez served as a judge on the awards jury of the XII Brazil International Environmental Film Festival ( FICA) in the city of Goias Velho. FICA is the largest environmental film festival in Brazil, and showcased an excellent selection of international films and videos produced in Brazil and internationally. As part of a strong educational component, the festival also held several days of workshops and short environmental courses focusing on the environmental conditions and threats to the Brazilian Cerrado, a biological hotspot and one of the most threatened biomes in South America.  Main Film Festival website: http://www.fica.art.br/

June 28: Special Seminar by Mario Milanese, Politecnico di Torino, Italy, speaking about High-Altitude Wind Power for Energy Generation at Costs Lower Than Oil. He presented the innovative technology of high altitude wind power generation, indicated as Kitenergy, which exploits the automatic flight of tethered airfoils (e.g., power kites) to extract energy from wind blowing between 200 and 800 m above the ground. These kites generate significantly more energy than windmill towers over a similar area.

 

 





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Field & Berry Groups

June 2: Kyla Dahlin is second author on a Chapter of a book titled Weather, Climate, and Society published by the Amer. Meteorological Soc. 2010. The Chapter’s title is Choosing Carbon Mitigation Strategies Using Ethical Deliberation.

June 4: Carolyn Snyder, PhD, lead a discussion on: "Climate Change Adaptation Assessment and Planning at the State Level." Starting this summer, she will be the Director of Clean Energy and Climate Policy for the State of Delaware in their Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. Part of her job will be coordinating adaptation planning and policy for the State. She asked to have an open discussion of lessons learned from the adaptation planning process in California, as well as more general advice and brainstorming for what her agenda should be in her new job. We all learned a bit more about this small, eastern State and about planning policies.
Tasting: Carolyn brought samples of eleven, different dried fruits purchased at the Whole Foods Store: apples, pears, apricots, raisins, bananas, prunes, cranberries, mango, ginger, papaya, & pineapple. 

June 7: Joe Berry (et al.) announce a new paper published in Vol.13, issue 3, June 2010 of Current Opinion in Plant Biology & titled Stomata: key players in the earth system, past and present. It’s also available online at www.sciencedirect.com.

June 21: Bill Anderegg and colleagues have a very interesting study on the credentials of scientists in different parts of the spectrum on climate change published in the PNAS online at <http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1003187107>   

June 25: The Department gathered to wish Chris Doughty well for his next adventure. Early in July he will be starting a Fellowship in Tropical Forest Ecology based at Oriel College, Oxford Univ., UK, and funded by the Moore Foundation. For several years, he will be monitoring the Amazon Rain Forest and traveling between South America and England.

June 28: Ken Caldeira went to the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, to attend a steering committee meeting of the Global Carbon Project (15 to 17 June). On Friday, 18 June, he visited the Royal Society of London to discuss a meeting be planned for the autumn. On 21 June, he flew to Bonn, Germany, to speak at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum. One minute and 24 seconds of his remarks can be found in edited form here:  http://soundcloud.com/global-media-forum-2010/im-gesprach-ken-caldeira

Editor: Click on photos to enlarge them.
Jan Brown, jbrown1@stanford.edu