Congratulations to Mostafa on the publication of his paper, “Canopy temperature dynamics are closely aligned with ecosystem water availability across a water- to energy-limited gradient”, in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. Synthesizing data from three different sites, each instrumented for eddy covariance measurements and canopy thermal imaging, Mostafa’s paper highlight the importance of considering water and energy limitations when studying canopy temperature dynamics in different ecosystems.
Organized by Jen, Mostafa, and Ben Wiebe, and with funding from FLUXNET, AmeriFlux, NAU’s T3 Program in Ecoinformatics, the College of the Environment, Forestry, and Natural Sciences, the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, and Campbell Scientific, the Great Thermal Bake-off was a smashing success.
From August 13th to 16th, 40 scientists from over 10 countries gathered at NAU’s Historic Hat Ranch property, just west of Williams, AZ, to discuss advancing the application and standardization of near-surface Thermal Infrared (TIR) remote sensing in ecological research. The workshop included participants from various career stages, with half identifying as early-career researchers, fostering a diverse and collaborative environment.
The main objectives of the workshop were to Enhance Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration an to Promote Standardization and Accessibility, and a key outcome was quantitative data from a series of experiments to characterize the uncertainty in canopy temperature measurements made under real-world conditions.
Congratulations to the organizers on a fantastic event!
Jen was recently out at Hat Ranch, setting up instruments in preparation for The Great Thermal Bake off in mid-August. Although it can be hard to find good help these days, Jen reported that her field technicians were very enthusiastic — keen to lend a hand (or hoof?) and generally get in the way, especially this dun-colored sweetie.
Darby and Oscar road-tripped to Long Beach, CA, for the Ecological Society of America’s annual meeting, where they gave a PhenoCam training workshop, “Introduction to the PhenoCam Network”, in early August. The workshop was attended by 23 conference-goers eager to learn more about PhenoCam. Darby and Oscar answered many questions about the potential uses of PhenoCam data, and described plans to adopt the StarDot Live2 camera as the next-generation PhenoCam standard. Participants explored the web page and chose a favorite site, and after being introduced to some of the R packages designed for interacting with PhenoCam data they they plotted up Gcc curves for that site. They then pulled midday images for one day each month to provide context for these numerical data. At the end of the session, attendees uploaded a show-and-tell slide and presented their analysis to the group. Thanks Darby and Oscar for running a highly successful session, and thanks to Mostafa for helping to develop the training materials!
p.s. Check out the snazzy “Richardson Lab” shirt that Oscar is sporting…
In early August, Andrew and George Koch made a quick trip to Santa Lucia Preserve, near Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, for some site maintenance and datalogger code updates. Of the six second-growth Sequoia sempervirens trees they have instrumented over three trips this summer, all trees are instrumented with five Tomst dendrometers, three Meter leaf wetness sensors, and one Florapulse microtensiometer for continuous measurements of stem water potential. Half the trees are equipped with Campbell temp/RH probes and half the trees with the IRSystem MiniBSV 10k Visibility Sensor for fog detection. All sensors are connected to a Campbell CR310 datalogger in each tree. Because logger channels were in short supply, the MiniBSV sensors communicate using the Tekbox TBS06-TS SDI-RS232 converter, connected to the logger’s DB9 serial port. Each tree’s measurement and logging system is solar powered, with Crydom D1D12 solid state relays being used to moderate power consumption. The logger in each tree communicates with the “Brain Box” in Tree 1 via Ubiquiti NanoStation P2P radios; the Brain Box is also equipped with a StarDotPhenoCam, and a SierraWireless RV50x cell modem/router for two-way communications between all trees and the outside world. What a cool project to be doing more than 60 m above the ground!
The photo shows Andrew in the top of Tree 6. The base of this tree is occupied by a giant wood rat nest, and hence this particular tree has now become known as Wood Rat City (sung to the tune of a Guns N’ Roses classic).
Natasha drove out to the Sevilleta NWR in central New Mexico at the end of July. She and Jacob installed a network of Eosense FD, or “Forced Diffusion”, sensors to continuously measure the CO2 efflux from the soil. They instrumented a total of six plots within the Plains Grassland ecosystem type of the Sevilleta Mean-Variance Experiment. The data these sensors collect will help us understand how changes in amount and variability of precipitation inputs affect carbon cycling in the soil, complementing the data we are already collecting on-site with 72 phenocams across four different ecosystem types (Desert Shrubland, Desert Grassland, Plains Grassland, and Piñon–Juniper Woodland). Great job, Natasha and Jacob!
Elis Brown, our 2024 Sevilleta National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates intern, successfully and fabulously presented the research they conducted with Jacob this summer. The poster symposium took place on Thursday, August 1st at the Sevilleta Field Station south of Albuquerque, NM. Refreshments were had and exciting science was discussed. Elis’s poster was titled “Soil Respiration Responses to Altered Precipitation in a Creosote Shrubland.” Elis collected data using a Flux Puppy system at the Mean-Variance Experiment creosote site to investigate how reduced and more variable precipitation will influence soil respiration rates in bare soil and near creosotes. Ellis will be starting their junior year at NAU in just a few weeks. Way to go, Elis, and thanks to Jacob for serving as their mentor!
This July, the Macrosystems Ecology For All (MEFA) Annual Meeting took place in beautiful Boulder, CO. MEFA, a spin-off of the Ecological Research as Education Network (EREN), is a diverse community of ecologists from teaching-focused universities, research-focused universities, federal agencies, etc. The goal of this community is to implement macrosystems ecology concepts in teaching environments and engage in macrosystem ecology research projects using frameworks put forth in Heffernan et al. 2014. Jacob and former lab postdoc, Alison Post, were both in attendance at the Meeting. Alison led a data science workshop where she taught attendees about the PhenoCam Network and how to work with PhenoCam data via the PhenoCam API. Jacob assisted with this workshop by showing attendees the materials necessary to set up a PhenoCam site, including StarDot cameras, and answering technical questions regarding the site setup protocol and computer networking skills that come in handy.
Thanks for spreading the word about PhenoCam, Jacob and Alison!
Jen, Andrew, Ben Wiebe, and George Koch made an afternoon trip out to NAU’s historic Hat Ranch property, located just west of Williams, AZ about an hour from Flagstaff. The goal was scouting and logistics planning in support of The Great Thermal Bakeoff workshop that Jen is leading in August.
A highlight of the visit was seeing some of the magnificent alligator juniper (Juniperus deppeana) trees at the Ranch, including the gnarly multi-stemmed beauty shown in the picture below (note the live bark and foliage on the left most stem).
A big thanks to DAPS faculty member Mark Salvatore for serving as tour guide (and photographer).
In mid-June, a team of scientists from NOAA’s Boulder, CO, office visited Flagstaff. Led by Tilden Meyers and Dave Turner, the group was conducting a scouting trip to identify possible field sites for an extensive array of new instrumentation to study boundary layer processes, land-atmosphere interactions, and fire weather dynamics. Andrew met up with the group during their tour of the Flagstaff Arboretum, which was provided by Arboretum Director Nate O’Meara.
