October 2011

GCEP Meeting

Oct. 4-5: The Global Climate & Energy Project held its 7th Annual Meeting at Stanford with the Title "Addressing the Changing Energy Landscape." DGE Alum, David Lobell moderated a session on Bioenergy with Chris Field as one of the speakers talking to the title: The Climate-Protective Domain. Grad Student, Lena Perkins presented a Poster titled Biomass and Carbon Negative Energy.

DGE's 2011-12 Seminars

Oct 11: Prof. Larry Crowder presented the first talk in this year’s seminar series. He studies marine ecology writ large, from food web interactions and marine recruitment, to spatial ecological analysis, to evaluation of approaches to marine conservation.  Some of his earlier work contributed to widespread adoption of turtle excluder devices (TED) in fisheries, and more recently he has worked on global assessments of bycatch, ecosystem-based management, and marine spatial planning. He raised the question of whether sea turtles can adapt fast enough to survive relatively rapid, human-induced Climate Change. Dr. Crowder recently moved from Duke University to Stanford, where he is the Science Director of the Center for Ocean Solutions, Professor of Biology based at Hopkins Marine Station, and a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment.

Oct 12: Bradley Opdyke is a Geochemist based at the Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra. He visited us last year (Nov. 2010) and spoke about an increase in ocean acidity and its deleterious effect on corals. This time his main emphasis was on dolomite deposits in Holocene rocks and their possible origins from coralline red algae. Holocene dolomite is a biological precipitate with a high magnesium content composed of a mixture of magnesium calcite, dolomite and magnetite. These studies have implications for current models of sea level change.

DGE Internal Seminars

Oct 3: Bill Anderegg, 4th year Grad Student, brought us up to date on his research into Forests and Climate Change. Although his specific study has been of the aspen forest die-off in Colorado, his wider interest is with Models of Ecosystems with Climate Change. Is there a Dynamic Global Vegetation Model or are many site-specific models more useful?

Oct 6: Mark Higgins, Post Doc from Duke Univ. & newest member ofthe Asner Group spoke about his Thesis work titled "Geological control of floristic composition in Amazonian forests." Accurate maps of composition and function are critical for conservation planning in Amazonian forests, but are sorely lacking for most of Amazonia. Using a combination of satellite imagery and field inventory, we demonstrate that Amazonian forests are partitioned into large-area units on the basis of geological formations and their edaphic properties. The boundaries between these geological formations, furthermore, correspond to floristic discontinuities that extend for hundreds to thousands of kilometers. The existence of broad-scale units in Amazonia indicates that conservation planning should proceed on a region-by-region basis, and has far-reaching implications for the function and evolution of the Amazonian biota.

Oct 10: Kate Marvel spoke to the title "Global Wind Power and Climate" and described her preliminary modeling results. She defined such terms as local wind effects, e.g. turbulence, dissipation, whole atmosphere and the vertical transfer of energy which elicited much discussion. Her visit to Caldeira's Lab has been shortened by the offer of a job next month at the Lawrence/ Livermore Laboratory.

Oct 17: Joe Berry spoke about satellite measurements of chlorophyll fluorescence. The goal of this work is to find independent methods of measuring photosynthesis over large areas. It is now becoming possible to measure not only chlorophyll fluorescence but also oxygen absorption in the infrared region of the spectrum from outer space and correlate these numbers with primary productivity on the ground.

Oct 31: Andrew Davies who is a visiting graduate student working with Greg, spoke about grass decomposition in African savannas.   

Oct 17: Louis Fernandez writes: Here is good overview article that just came out on www.mongabay.com  regarding deforestation in Madre de Dios, Peru resulting from the recent massive global gold boom. The article features two of the studies we have been conducting in Peru with several collaborators (Amazon Conservation Association, US EPA, Argonne National Laboratory  University of Machala - Ecuador)   The article even has a couple pics of  me in the field(!)....including one with a rather large fish (Zungaro zungaro).
Greg Asner's work on mapping deforestation is also featured. http://news.mongabay.com/2011/1011-fraser_gold_mining_peru.html