Terrestrial Ecosystem Ecology
In late June, Andrew joined “Team Snoddy 2025” (Mariah, Austin, and REU Delaney Watkins) on a week-long trip to the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, CO, to conduct research around Gothic (photo below) and on the nearby Snodgrass Mountain. The weather was perfect, and well-suited to replacing sensors, rewiring battery boxes, downloading dendrometer data, measuring soil CO2/CH4 fluxes, and inventorying trees. The tallest tree measured was a 34.5 m Engelmann spruce!
Ever wondered how artificial light at night (ALAN) and the urban heat island (UHI) together impact plant phenology? Check out the new paper (with Andrew as a coauthor) led by Lin Meng at Vanderbilt, “Artificial light at night outweighs temperature in lengthening urban growing seasons”, published this week in Nature Cities!
The figure below, from Lin’s paper, shows how increasing impervious fractions results in a concave quadratic increase of air temperature (Ta) and exponential increase of ALAN from rural to urban areas. The longer exposure to ALAN and higher Ta collectively contributes to a longer growing season, represented by the advancement of the SOS and delay of EOS in urban areas compared with rural areas.
In mid-June, Oscar gave a tour of his equipment at the Cedar Mesa AmeriFlux site (also part of the Utah Flux Network) to a group of about 10 researchers and professionals who were part of the “Water & Energy Flux in the Desert” workshop led by Paul Inkenbrandt (Utah Geological Survey). A highlight for the participants was Oscar’s sap flow instruments, and discussion topics included how the collected data could be used to quantify specific components of the ecosystem water budget. Oscar noted, “Thank you to Paul for the opportunity and all workshop participants for their attention!”
The below photo shows Oscar giving a show-and-tell of one of his instrumented trees, which also features a Tomst dendrometer. Photo by Patrick Engberson.
