Seminar series at UiO

Posted by Michelle:

I heard a talk today by Drs. Stephen Schneider and Terry Root. Both are from the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University and authors on the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. They reviewed climate change data and discussed the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark in December. (Note:  Dr. Terry Root was a SoLS seminar speaker in 2008).

Key take-aways:

• There is a scale “mismatch” between politics and climate sciences. While politics tends to focuses on short-term local issues, climate change occurs over the long term (centuries-millennia) at regional/global scales. This presents a major challenge to international agreements on adaption to and mitigation of climate change.
• ~400,000 species could become extinct globally in response to a 2°C global temperature increase.
• Changes in animal phenology can be attributed to both natural and anthropogenic climate change, however, the effects of anthropogenic change appear greater than natural change.
• Understanding the ecological effects of ocean acidification requires more research.

For more information check out:

http://en.cop15.dk/

http://woods.stanford.edu

Interview on Australian Radio

Posted by Jim:

One thing I’ve become increasingly interested in is the potential for eventual P limitation of the human food supply.  I recently found that an interview I did last year discussing this, along with other things P-related, is available via Australian National Radio, with host Robyn Williams (no, not THAT Robin Williams)  .

I must admit the two kind of look alike though!    Here’s the link.

Report 2 from Woodstoich 2

Posted by Jim

Woodstoich 2 has hit full stride.  Yesterday the working groups worked feverishly and handed in their papers for review by 9 PM; they were out for review by 9:30 PM.  Then the tie-dye party broke out and many amazing shirts appeared.  Next, most of the crowd settled in to watch the documentary “Woodstock” (all 3.5 h of it, finishing at 2 AM).

We woke up a little groggy but were energized by a visit to the amazing Yamadera temple in the mountains nearby.  After a lovely bento lunch, we headed off to a local pottery for lessons on pot making.  We made some pots (well, some of them looked like pots…) which will be fired with the Woodstoich logo and sent to us in a couple of months.  Next we headed off to a local onsen (hot spring) resort for a relaxing soak followed by an amazing kaiseki dinner.

Now we are back, and the manuscript reviews are starting to come in.  Tomorrow the groups work on revisions and get ready for the Woodstock costume blow-out.

Here are pictures of the tie-dye outcomes and a picture of the male component of Woodstoich 2 at the onsen.  Sharp!

Report 1 from Woodstoich 2 in Japan

Posted by Jim:

Woodstoich 2 is now well underway here in Kawatabi, Japan.  All the participants arrived successfully to Sendai and we moved to the Kawatabi experimental farm.  After an opening session featuring the music of CSNY (“Woodstock”) and a slide show from Woodstoich 1 in Finse, the groups got right to work on their projects.  After a hard day’s work, we had a fun barbeque dinner (cooked our own food on hot plates on the tables) and then many of us headed off to a local onsen.

This morning began with an outstanding talk about nutritional geometry by David Raubenheimer and then the groups gave progress reports.  This afternoon the lazy guys (Elser, Urabe, Naeem, Raubenheimer) took a field trip to a local volcanic lake.  Meanwhile the groups continue to work at a feverish pace.

We also had great fun for a little while using the website translationparty.com.  Check it out!

Below are some pictures of participants.

Nate Morehouse & David Raubenheimer discussing Sex & Stoichiometry

Angelica, Anja, Michael, & Shahid having lunch

Yellowstone in the rear view mirror

Posted by Marcia:

We just completed a record for the shortest field season, but if the exhaustion in my very bones is any indication, I would have to say it more than made up for length. The hot springs were incredible to see in person. There is something pretty special about standing at pool side with meters dangling in the water and reading off that you are next to water that is 86C and a pH of less than 2.

Cuatro Cienegas – Final Update from Jess

Jess collecting samples of the microbes that make the stromatolites

I arrived last night to Monterrey and tomorrow I will board a plane to return to the States. Ending a field season is always bittersweet; however, I still have to get all my samples home safely, so that is occupying my mind mostly right now.   The pictures are from some of the final sample collections – scraping stromatolites for DNA, RNA, C, N, and P, and walking along the Rio Mezquites for water chemistry samples.  The last picture is of a moon rise, an event I was fortunate enough to watch several nights from the campsite and the cabins where I stayed in town.  More photos will be posted on the Flickr site soon.

Jess taking water samples from Rio Mezquites (photo by Juan Manuel Gomez)

Moon rise in Rio Mezquites (photo by Juan Manuel Gomez)

Jim’s Report from Inner Mongolia

From China, through Jess’ internet connection in Mexico, here is Jim’s latest update:

I arrived safely on Sunday to a rainy and smoggy Beijing and then more or less immediately departed on another flight to Xilinhot, Inner Mongolia. After an hour’s drive on an increasingly potholed highway, we arrived at the IMGERS research station at midnight. I spent the day yesterday with my BEF (“Biodiversity/Ecosystem Function”) colleagues inspecting the research plots and discussing the data we have so far. I was able to make an initial Gigapan panorama (57 pictures) of the field site. We also had a basketball game (Jingle and Arianne defeated Chris Clark and me) and a festive dinner. More of the same today and then back to Beijing for the 3-day conference on grassland ecology honoring the 25th anniversary of the IMGERS research station.

APA Zoop Quick Update

Posted by Angie:

I’m back home now. It was a great trip!

Currently I can working on going through the data I collected throughout the summer. I have APA and Protein amounts for 600 zooplankton. Here is a quick and simple bar graph summarizing those numbers.  Here I normalized APA to protein.

I’m also working on measuring the length of the animals from their photographs. Once I get these done I will normalize APA to animal size and see how that looks. I also have water filters from the lake that I need to process for P and C content. I brought the filters back from Norway and plan to bring them into Dr. Elser’s lab in Tempe this week.

I’m also typing up a bit about exactly what I did in Norway – the procedures I did to collect and analyze my samples.  I  hope to post/ email more soon.

Much thanks to everyone that made it possible and helped me out this summer. It really was an amazing opportunity. Thanks!

Thank you to ASU Parents Association!

Posted by Jess:

Like Angie’s trip to Norway, the ASU Parents Association is also the sponsor for Drew’s trip to Mexico. It was a huge help to have Drew in the field, and I’d like to think he got a lot out of his first field work research experience. Thanks, ASU Parents Association!

Jess and Drew in the Dunas del Yeso (Gypsum Dunes), in the Cuatro Cienegas Valley

Yellowstone Adventures

Posted by Jim:

The Yellowstone crew is on its way back to AZ now after two intense weeks of sampling and experimentation.  Some of the group participated in wide-ranging sampling of hot springs to characterize the “Extended Redfield Ratio” (i.e. C:N:P:Fe:Mo:Ti:Ni:Zn:etc) in diverse microbiota (photoautotrophs, chemotrophs, etc) in chemically diverse environments. Some amazingly weird conditions (at least for the Elser lab) were encountered, such as water at 98 degrees C and <1 pH.  And >11 pH.    A lot of effort also went into a series of studies to compare N transformations under chemotrophic and phototrophic conditions.  I’ve posted some semi-random pictures on the Flickr site (see the link on the right).

Here’s a picture of yours truly carefully sampling a 80 degree C, pH 2.0 hot spring.  Note the bison supervising in the background.

Here at the Fossil Hills site, we decided to name all the springs sampled after things and characters from Alice in Wonderland. You should see the spring we called "Drink Me".