Blog

In early March, Mostafa was the invited speaker in the SICCS Ecoinformatics Seminar, which attracts ecologically- and environmentally-minded data scientists from across campus. Mostafa’s presentation, “Hot or Not? How Thermal Imaging Reveals the Hidden Language of Plants,” focused on what we can learn from longwave thermal imaging—at wavelengths well beyond the visible spectrum—of plant canopies can tell us about leaf physiology, stress, energy balance, and water fluxes.

Andrew served as one of several guest editors for the special issue just published in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, “Land-Atmosphere Interactions: Integrating surface flux and atmospheric boundary layer measurements“. The special issue emerged from the 2021 virtual workshop coordinated between AmeriFlux and DOE’s ARM User Facility and DOE’s ASR and ESS programs. An overview paper, led by Celia Faiola (UC Irvine), served to introduce the topic and summarize key contributions of the papers in the special issue.

Professor Ryan Emanuel, a hydrologist from Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and member of North Carolina’s Lumbee tribe, visited campus for a presentation in the Ecoinformatics Seminar. Ryan’s seminar focused on the idea that scientific research can be informed, strengthened, and even transformed through deep integration of environmental justice thought and practice. He used examples from long-term partnerships with Indigenous communities in North Carolina aimed at understanding the impacts of industrial livestock production, fossil fuel infrastructure, and climate change to wetlands and other culturally significant environments.

Weijie Zhang, a PhD student in Martin Jung’s group at the MPI in Jena, Germany, visit the lab for a month. He presented his work on global patterns of water use efficiency in the Ecoinformatics Seminar and had lots of time to talk about his work with other members of the lab. He also got to ride in a police car!

Darby Bergl presented and defended her prospectus, and received a unanimous thumbs-up from her committee (Mariah, Andrew, and Ted Schuur). Darby’s PhD research will focus on carbon cycling in deciduous forests of New England, with an emphasis on long-term observations and experiments from Bartlett Experimental Forest and the Hubbard Brook and Harvard Forest LTER sites. Congratulations, Darby!

In early January, Natasha and Jacob traveled to Albuquerque to participate in the annual SEV LTER “All Hands” meeting. The two-day meeting featured a workshop to foster two-way conversations between regional land managers and SEV LTER researchers about land management challenges and information needs, and a symposium which featured presentations on current research at SEV. Natasha presented her soil respiration modeling in the symposium.

The photo shows Natasha, LTER PI Jenn Rudgers (University of New Mexico) and Jacob out on the town.

In August 2020, the CZU Lightning Complex fire burned through Big Basin Redwoods Sate Park near Santa Cruz, CA. Supported by NSF RAPID funding, as well as Save the Redwoods League, Andrew, Mariah, George Koch, Melissa Enright, and Drew Peltier have been studying the resprouting of trees following that massive disturbance, and measuring the age of remobilized carbon used to support resprouting using the MICADAS (MIni CArbon DAting System) in the ACE Lab here at NAU. With Drew as first author, our paper on this project, “Old reserves and ancient buds fuel regrowth of coast redwood after catastrophic fire,” has just been published in Nature Plants. Press releases from NAU and Save the Redwoods League both do a nice job explaining the story in a non-technical and accessible manner. There is also a great summary published by Science News. Don’t forget to check out the santracruz2 phenocam, which is tracking the recovery! And remember, the documentary produced by NAU-TV, Redwood Survival, will always be streaming on YouTube.

Andrew is co-PI on a funded grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, “Ecological and Social Science Training and Education at the Intersection of Forests, Fires and Floods in a Changing Climate (ESSTE),” on which close collaborator George Koch is lead PI. The project will help prepare NAU students to address climate change in western forest ecosystems. For more information, see the NAU News article.

Natasha had the opportunity to participate in a workshop focused on phenological monitoring in the dry tropics, which was held at the Ongava Research Centre in Namibia. The workshop was organized as part of the PhenoChange project, coordinated by Kyle Dexter of the University of Edinburgh. Natasha met colleagues from around the world, presented the lab’s own work with the PhenoCam Network and applications to modeling ecosystem processes, assisted with field work, and even went on a few Safari drives!

Sophie Fauset, from the University of Plymouth, and her student William Brown, visited the lab for a week in early November. Sophie is PI of the netCTF, or Network for Monitoring Canopy Temperature of Forests, a project funded by the U.K.’s Natural Environment Research Council in 2020. Sophie and William presented their work at the BiFOR (Birmingham Institute of Forest Research) FACE (Free Air CO₂ Enrichment) facility in the UK and at the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana in a mini-symposium on canopy temperature that was organized by Jen. Jen, Mostafa, Sophie, and William also worked together on camera calibration and image processing protocols, including head-to-head field testing of thermal cameras manufactured by FLUKE and FLIR.