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DGE Newsletter, March 2006
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OutReach
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Seminars
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March 12 from Dave Kroodsma: Gregg, Brooks, and I crossed into Guatemala from Mexico by riding in a small boat across the Usumacinta River. Although this region is sparsely populated, I noticed an immediate change in the people across the border. The children, instead of asking me how much my bike was worth (as nearly every person in Chiapas asked), smiled, played with my bike seat, and tried to say ‘how are you’ in English. The police told me no one had been attacked on the road in three years, and I rode the dirt road until I found a small town where locals allowed me to camp. Gregg and Brooks continued by van, and we split ways. All of these experiences are recorded within the journals of my website <www.rideforclimate.com>" |
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| March 22: Dr. Damon Matthews, Dept. Geography, Univ. Calgary spoke about the role of the carbon cycle in the climate system. Particularly, how may changes climate and atmospheric carbon dioxide affect sinks and sources of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, and how might these changes either amplify or |
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| moderate climate changes over the next century? Additionally, what are the implications of possible carbon cycle feedbacks for developing greenhouse gas emissions targets aimed at stabilization of atmospheric carbon dioxide? |
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March 8: Dr. Hans-Otto Pörtner, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research spoke on the Physiological limits to biogeography and biodiversity? A climate change perspective. Hans is one of the world's leading experts on the physiology of marine animals, including the effects of CO2 on |
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Asner Group
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March 13: Paulo Oliveira and Greg Asner traveled to Peru to kick-off the new Amazon forest disturbance and logging project.
March 3: Greg Asner gave the environmental science seminar at Duke University.
Eben Broadbent will be starting a 4-5 year PhD program in Stanford's Dept. Biological Sciences working in Chris Field's Lab. His research interests are in soil-plant-animal interactions, in particular in tropical forests undergoing anthropogenic change, and along successional forest gradients and those that can serve as proxies for global change (i.e. precipitation or temperature). He hopes to link these interests with hyperspectral (or hyperspectral-LIDAR imagers such as the proposed Carnegie Airborne Observatory) imagery for regional scaling of fine scale ecological studies, in particular as relates to land use cover change issues. His likely area of interests are Hawaii, Costa Rica, and/or the Amazon.
Eben plans to continue collaborating on projects with his wife, Angelica Almeyda (also in Asner's lab) on interdisciplinary projects in the Amazon. This summer they are organizing a project to investigate the socio-edaphic factors influencing swidden agricultural decisions by smallholders in the Amazon MAP region (tri-national frontier of Brazil, Bolivia and Peru), as well as a preliminary project looking at soil nutrient/carbon storage along a successional forest chronosequence following swidden agriculture in lowland Bolivia.
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| marine mammals. His research interests include climate dependent evolution; aging and oxidative stress; thermal limitation and adaptation; development of in vivo NMR and MRI techniques; and functional genomics of thermal adaptation. See http://www.awibremerhaven.de/People/show?hpoertner |
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| March 7: Dr. Claudia Czimczik, Dept. Earth System Science, UC Irvine spoke on the Changing sources of soil respiration in boreal forests with time since various fires. Our results also indicated that decomposition of old organic matter in mineral soils contributed to soil respiration in younger stands during |
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| warmer years - a flux likely to become more important with increasing temperatures and/or fire frequencies. See her work at www.czimczik.com/ |
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| March 1: Barbara Block, Professor of Marine Science, Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford Univ. labeled her talk Sushi and Satellites. This translated into her studies tracking tunas, sharks, and other large pelagic fish across the oceans. She showed us photos of the tagging process, followed by the data obtained either |
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Field & Berry Groups
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March 2: Ulli Seibt presented her recent research on nocturnal stomatal conductance and its effect on water and oxygen fluxes used in models of gas exchange. She has found large differences in plant species with high leaf water content.
Tasting: Ulli brought 10 varieties of pears. Those we liked best were Bartlett - Chile, Oregon Comice - USA, Bosc (organic) - USA followed by D'Anjou (organic) - USA, Red D'Anjou, Meyer's Pride - USA, Yau apple-pear - China, Golden apple-pear - Korea, "Best ever" Meyer's Pride - USA, Concorde - USA, Seckel - USA. Did you know there are so many varieties of one fruit in a California market at one time?
March 9: Kim Nicholas Cahill gave us a preview of the talk she plans to give next week before a Wine Growers Association titled Linking Environmental Management and Wine Grape Quality at the Vineyard Scale.
She asked for and received constructive criticism.
Tasting: Kim brought nine different cans of various energy drinks. Rock Star was the best for some.
March 16: Noel Gurwick described in detail research he carried out for a New York State governmental office for wetlands regulation while he was a graduate student at Cornell Univ. He left us with a model of how such regulation might be managed for other environmental issues as well.
Tasting: Noel brought five different brands of Anchovies in tins and jars to taste on crackers. All tasted good, but one was a bit too salty.
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| from fishermen or satellite signals from swimming fish as they moved thousands of miles in search of food or spawning grounds. |
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Ken Caldeira's lab had a fairly quiet month. The big news is that a new 40 processor computer cluster, known as 'ecology', started being used for scientific applications thanks to the diligence of Bob Haxo.
The lab hosted two visitors, Peter Israelsson from MIT and Hans Poertner from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. We introduced Hans to cabaret music in San Francisco, which he thought was 'very American'.
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Archives and PDF Archives of past Newsletters, Click on photos for enlargement. |
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Editor Jan Brown, e-mail: jbrown@globalecology.stanford.edu
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