Blog

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.

In early June, Mariah, Austin, Alatna, and Andrew traveled to the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, CO, for field work and a team meeting with collaborators (Adrianna Foster and Will Wieder from NCAR, and Ben Lucas from NAU) on Mariah’s DOE ESS project on Snodgrass Mountain. During four grueling days of field work, all walkie-talkie calls were initiated with the familiar cry of “Calling all Snoddies!” With beautiful weather, the aspen leaves just coming out, and wild flowers blooming, it was a great week.

Funded by a new grant from Save the Redwoods League, and with field support from Steve Sillett and Marie Antoine of Cal Poly Humboldt, Andrew and George Koch spent a week near Carmel Valley, CA, setting up instruments, data loggers, and wireless communications hardware in the tops of six magnificent Sequoia sempervirens trees. The project studies relationships between the presence of fog and wood growth.

The first photo shows Steve, George, and Marie in the redwood grove, and the second shows Marie installing a solar panel at the top of “Tree 5.”

Kat Taylor, who was a 2021 participant in the DAPS REU program, graduated from Penn State this spring and while on a cross-country road trip stopped in Flagstaff to say hello. Kat had worked on greenhouse gas fluxes from biocrusts in an interdisciplinary project that included Andrew, Mariah, Matt Bowker (Forestry/Ecoss), George Koch (Bio/Ecoss), Mark Salvatore (DAPS), and David Trilling (DAPS) as mentors. During her visit, Kat said that the REU program had been “literally life-changing” for her. Good luck in all your future endeavors, Kat!

Debjani Sihi, assistant professor at Emory University (soon to be moving to NC State), visited the NAU and gave the last ecoinformatics seminar of the semester, “Modeling and mapping of soil organic carbon across scales.” Her work on both process-based modeling of soil respiration, and machine-learning-driven geospatial mapping of soil carbon stocks, was highly relevant to many students and faculty attending her talk.

Debjani was a postdoc (2015-2017) with long-time Howland Forest (Maine) co-PI Eric Davidson, and in connection with that work had previously visited Andrew’s lab at Harvard on several occasions. Her visit to NAU provided a great opportunity to dust off some vintage photos of the Howland Forest team from the days when they had regular team meetings at the Bartlett Experimental Forest in New Hampshire.

Howland Team 2016. From left: Andrew, Aaron Teets (NAU PhD 2022), Holly Huges, Kathleen Savage, Debjani, Shawn Fraser, Dave Hollinger, John Lee.

Howland Team 2008: Bryan Dail, Neal Scott, Holly Huges, Eric Davidson, Kathleen Savage, John Lee, Bob Evans, Andrew, Chuck Rodriguez, Dave Hollinger.

At the end of the semester, lab members again participated in a new professional development workshop, “Principles of Inclusion,” offered by NAU’s Center for Inclusive Excellence and Access in collaboration with the Department of Human Resources. Our goal in taking these training activities is to make active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity a core component of our lab culture, thereby creating an environment where everyone can thrive and succeed.

Thanks to Justin Mallett and Lee Griffin for another great session! We look forward to more workshops with you next fall!

Congratulations to DendoDawgs capstone team members Zack Derrick, Asa Henry, Niklas Kariniemi, and Nile Roth for their great final presentation in the NAU Undergraduate Symposium. They shared their work on an Android app to read and manage data collected by Tomst dendrometers and soil moisture sensors.

Members of the lab gathered on the back patio at Cornish Pasty Co. for an end-of-semester lab lunch earlier this week. The chicken tikka masala pasty was particularly popular and received high marks all around. Thanks to Jacob and Jen for organizing a fun group outing!