Month: October 2023

Andrew’s review paper, “PhenoCam: An evolving, open-source tool to study the temporal and spatial variability of ecosystem-scale phenology,” which was solicited for the 60th anniversary Special Issue of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, has now been published online. The review describes (1) the changing phenological research landscape, as represented by phenology-themed papers in AFM, over the last 60 y; (2) the contributions of phenocams and the PhenoCam Network, as reported in the pages of AFM, to the study of phenology; and (3) the lessons we learned from developing this grassroots effort. It also tells the story of the development and evolution of PhenoCam Network, and the fortuitious discoveries that led to PhenoCam. Thanks to AFM editors, Claudia Wagner-Riddle and Timothy Griffis, for the invitation to write this review!

Yujie and Mostafa attended the AmeriFlux meeting in central Massachusetts, which included a visit to Harvard Forest. Lab work presented at the meeting centered around the AmeriFlux Year of Remote Sensing theme. Yujie talked about her work on filling long gaps using boosted regression tree methods and including PhenoCam Gcc as a covariate, while Mostafa talked about canopy temperature measurements using thermal imaging. Andrew gave a virtual overview of PhenoCam (link to video), which was followed by former postdoc Adam Young’s presentation on integrating PhenoCam and tower flux measurements.

The usual group photo is below—who do you recognize?

In early October, Jenn Rudgers, Regents’ and Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of New Mexico and Director, Sevilleta Long-Term Ecological Research Program, visited NAU and presented in the Ecoinformatics Seminar. Her seminar title was “Environmental variability at dryland ecotones: Research from the Sevilleta LTER.” Jenn’s presentation focused on the potential impacts of changing climate variance, rather than just changes in the mean climate. She talked about some of the underlying theory, gave several examples of recent studies from Sevilleta that help understand the ecological impacts of changing climate variance, and described the new Sevilleta Mean x Variance Experiment, which is being conducted in five different ecosystem types at the LTER. Thanks for your visit, Jenn!

Darby joined a group of Ecoss graduate students and faculty who participated in the Story Collider event at Kitt Recital Hall. The evening was organized as part of the Flagstaff Festival of Science, and was sponsored by NPRs Story Collider podcast and the Writing Class Radio podcast. The presenters, who had spent months developing and polishing their work, bravely shared stories that merged personal lives with science lives, in ways that were emotionally charged, deeply personal, and frequently humorous. After the event, Prof. Jane Marks wrote, “the audience laughed, they gasped, and I think a few shed some tears. It was a beautiful, moving show.” Congratulations, Darby!