In the Media
Lecturer and Vermont Herpetologist Jim Andrews was interviewed on VPR Vermont Edition on August 23 by Jane Lindholm. The feature was called Skinks, Efts, And Underpasses: Herp It Up for Vermont's Reptiles and Amphibians. http://digital.vpr.net/post/skinks-efts-and-underpasses-herp-it-vermonts-reptiles-and-amphibians#stream/0
Blittersdorf Professor Jon Erickson’s new film, Waking the Sleeping Giant: The Making of a Political Revolution was featured in Vermont’s Seven Days Newspaper and played at film festivals in Vermont, Vancouver, Texas, Chicago, and more. The film was also featured on VPR, in a UVM press release, WAMC Northeast Public Radio, The Georgia Strait, North shore News, The Tyee, a David Beers essay, The Denton Record Chronicle, We Denton Do it Blog, North Texas Daily, DentonRadio.com, Good Morning Dallas, and more. The film won “Best Feature Documentary” at its world premiere at the Thin Line Fest. There were two screenings to packed theaters and local press in Vancouver where it screened at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival.
Bill Keeton, Professor of Forest Ecology and Forestry, was featured on VPR for his work on Old Growth Forests in Vermont. His work was also featured on Boston’s NPR Station, WBUR.
Fisheries Professor Ellen Marsden interviewed with NBC News Channel 5’s Tom Messner on lake research and ECHO Leahy Center collaboration on August 22. http://www.mynbc5.com/article/uvm-uses-research-vessel-to-study-water-quality-on-lake-champlain/12054658
Canopy mapping work by the Spatial Analysis Lab, directed Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne, was referenced in a Baltimore Sun article: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-op-0906-baltimore-tree-canopy-20170905-story.html
Awards, Scholarships, Appointments and Accomplishments
Lecturer and Herpetologist Jim Andrews received the 2017 NEPARC (Northeast Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation) Award for Excellence in Herpetofaunal Conservation. Jim has contributed to herpetofaunal conservation over the past 30-plus years and dedicates much of his own time to documenting the geography and ecology of herpetofauna throughout Vermont. He has taught countless students at Middlebury College, UVM, and elsewhere and has tirelessly overseen the Vermont Reptile and Amphibian Atlas Project since 1994.
Master’s Student Cody Aylward won a Travel Award from the American Society of Mammalogists to attend their annual conference held this year in Idaho. Cody received the award to present his research on American marten in the northeast. Cody is advised by Jed Murdoch, Terri Donovan, and Bill Kilpatrick of the Biology Department.
Marla Emery, Forest Service Research Geographer, received a USDA Forest Service Inspiring Women Award as an Outstanding Mentor/Coach in August at a special Forest Service awards ceremony.
PhD Student Marina Golivets received a full scholarship from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research to attend their iDiv Summer School this September in Leipzig where she will learn new statistical methods and improve her analytic skills.
Associate Professor Jed Murdoch received a 2017 UVM Kroepsch-Maurice Excellence in Teaching Award.
M.S. Student Brendan O’Brien received the Arthur J. and Clare Heiser Educational Fund (Florence Tinker Matteossian Memorial Grant).
Director Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne and the UVM Unmanned Aircraft Systems team in RSENR and CEMS flew high-profile drone missions of the Plymouth Airport and Cohasset Narrows Railroad Bridge for Dr. Jeff DeCarlo, head of Massachusetts DOT Aeronautics. The missions were videoed and will be presented to the Mass DOT Secretary of Transportation. Given that there is no shortage of academic institutions in MA with drone capabilities, it speaks volumes that UVM was asked to do this work.
Associate Professor Jason Stockwell received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to travel to Lake Geneva in France to study storm impacts on the world’s lakes. Jason will spend Spring Semester 2018 in France.
Program Notes
Jed Murdoch welcomes Jake DeBow as a new graduate student in the RSENR Master of Science program’s wildlife concentration. Jake has been managing a large-scale moose project with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department in the Northeast Kingdom. His research will involve analyzing moose survival data to investigate questions around moose declines in Vermont and the northeast. Jake is co-advised by Therese Donovan and linked to the USGS Vermont Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. The project received funding from the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department.
Cody Aylward successfully defended his Master’s thesis on American marten, a highly endangered carnivore in Vermont and species of conservation concern in the northeast. Cody's thesis title was: Estimating landscape quality and genetic structure of recovering American marten populations in the northeastern United States. The project received funding from the Northeastern States Research Cooperative, USDA McIntire-Stennis program, and Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department.
Presentations and Conferences
Jim Andrews
Jim presented at the Northeast Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (NEPARC) conference in Virginia in August. The title of his talk was The Monkton Vermont Amphibian Underpasses. At the meeting, he received the NEPARC Award for Excellence in Herpetofaunal Conservation.
Tony D’Amato
Tony was a keynote speaker at the 11th North American Forest Ecology Workshop at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta June 19-22. http://nafew.org/2017-agenda/ on Sustaining Forests: From Restoration to Conservation. Tony’s talk focused on Silviculture in the face of future uncertainty: is the past still relevant?
Ellen Marsden
Marsden, J. E., N. Dingledine, J. Adams, J. Johnson. Long-Term Assessment of the Physical Integrity and Biotic Colonization of Artificial Reefs. International Association of Great Lakes Researchers, Detroit, MI.
Euclide, P. T., J. E. Marsden, B. Pientka. Movement of walleye in Lake Champlain inferred from forty years of mark-recapture data. International Association of Great Lakes Research, Detroit, MI.
Jed Murdoch
DeBow, J., C. Alexander, J. Murdoch, and T. Donovan. Assessing mortality and productivity of moose in northern Vermont: Year one preliminary data. 51st North American Moose Conference, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2017.
Aylward, C., J. Murdoch, T. Donovan, and C. W. Kilpatrick. Modeling distribution and connectivity of recovering American marten populations in Vermont using expert elicitation techniques. American Society of Mammalogists Annual Conference, Moscow, Idaho, 2017.
Aylward, C., J. Murdoch, and C. W. Kilpatrick. Population genetic structure of recolonizing American marten in the northeastern United States. American Society of Mammalogists Annual Conference, Moscow, Idaho, 2017.
Rebecca Stern
Ph.D. Student Rebecca Stern presented at the ESA (Ecological Society of America) annual conference in Portland, OR in August: Stern, R., P.G. Schaberg, P.F. Murakami, C.F. Hansen, S.A. Rayback, G.J. Hawley. 2017. Evaluating trends and environmental drivers of red oak growth in the north of its range.
Lini Wollenberg
Research Professor Lini Wollenberg recently organized an online meeting of 30 leading scientists in soil carbon research globally and attended a meeting by the large French-led soil carbon initiative called 4 pour Mille (4 parts per thousand).
Publications
Carol Adair
Adair, E.C., W.J. Parton, J.Y. King, L.A. Brandt, and Y. Lin. 2017. Accounting for photodegradation dramatically improves prediction of carbon losses in dryland systems. Ecosphere DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.1892
Tony D’Amato
D’Amato, A. W., Palik, B. J., Franklin, J. F., & Foster, D. R. (2016). Exploring the origins of ecological forestry in North America. https://doi.org/10.5849/jof.16-013
D’Amato, A. W., Orwig, D. A., Foster, D. R., Barker Plotkin, A., Schoonmaker, P. K., & Wagner, M. R. (2017). Long-term structural and biomass dynamics of virgin Tsuga canadensis–Pinus strobus forests after hurricane disturbance. Ecology, 98(3), 721–733. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.1684
Palik, B. J., & D’Amato, A. W. (2017). Ecological forestry: Much more than retention harvesting. Journal of Forestry, 115(1), 51–53. https://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/53430
Lesk, C., E. Coffel, A.W. D’Amato, K. Dodds, and R. Horton. 2017. Threats to North American forests from southern pine beetle with warming winters. Nature Climate Change doi:10.1038/nclimate3375
Rachelle Gould
Gould, R. K., & Lincoln, N. K. (2017). Expanding the suite of Cultural Ecosystem Services to include ingenuity, perspective, and life teaching. Ecosystem Services, 25, 117–127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.04.002
Ellen Marsden
Binder T. R., J. E. Marsden, S. C. Riley, J. E. Johnson, N. S. Johnson, J. He, M. Ebener, C. M. Holbrook, R. A. Bergstedt, C. R. Bronte, T. A. Hayden, and C. C. Krueger. 2017. Lake-wide movements and spatial segregation of two populations of lake trout, Salvelinus namaycush, in Lake Huron. J. Great Lakes Res.
Johnson, N. J., D. Higgs, T. R. Binder, J. E. Marsden, T. Buchinger, L. Brege, T. Bruning, S. Farha. 2017. Sound production by spawning lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) in Lakes Huron and Champlain. Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci.
Simard, L., V. A Sotola, S. Miehls, J. E. Marsden. 2017. Survival of lamprey transformers tagged with PIT tags. Animal Biotelemetry 5:18.
Marsden, J. E., B. J. Ladago. 2017. The Champlain Canal as an exotic species vector. J. Great Lakes Res. 43:00-00.
Jed Murdoch
Murdoch, J., R. Reading, S. Amgalanbaatar, G. Wingard, and B. Lkhagvasuren. 2017. Ecological interactions shape the distribution of a cultural ecosystem service: Argali sheep (Ovis ammon) in the Gobi-Steppe of Mongolia. Biological Conservation 209:315-322.
Murdoch, J., R. Reading, S. Amgalanbaatar, G. Wingard, and B. Lkhagvasuren. 2017. Argali sheep (Ovis ammon) movement corridors between critical resources in Ikh Nart Nature Reserve, Mongolia. Mongolian Journal of Biological Sciences 15:3-11.
Ekernas, L. S., W. M. Sarmento, H. S. Davie, R. P. Reading, J. Murdoch, G. J. Wingard, S. Amgalanbaatar, and J. Berger. 2017. Desert pastoralists’ negative and positive effects on rare wildlife in the Gobi. Conservation Biology 31:269-277.
Coleman, K., J. Murdoch, S. Rayback, A. Seidl, and K. Wallin. 2017. Students' understanding of sustainability and climate change across linked service-learning courses. Journal of Geoscience Education 65:158-167.
Eric Roy
Roy, E.D., E. Willig, L.A. Martinelli, P.D. Richards, F. Ferraz Vazquez, L. Pegorini, S. Spera, & S. Porder. 2017. Soil phosphorus sorption capacity after three decades of intensive fertilization in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 249: 206-214.
Roy, E.D., N. Nguyen, & J.R. White. 2017. Changes in estuarine sediment phosphorus fractions during a large-scale Mississippi River diversion. Science of the Total Environment 609: 1248-1257.
Roy, E.D. 2017. Phosphorus recovery and recycling with ecological engineering: a review. Ecological Engineering 98: 213-227.
Paul Schaberg
Schaberg, P.G.; Murakami, P.F.; Butnor, J.R.; Hawley, G.J. Experimental branch cooling increases foliar sugar and anthocyanin concentrations in sugar maple at the end of the growing season. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 47:696-701. (FY’17). With associated blog on the journal’s website: http://www.cdnsciencepub.com/blog/what-experimental-branch-cooling-tells-us-about-the-beautiful-reds-of-fall.aspx
Kosiba, A.M.; Schaberg, P.G.; Rayback, S.A.; Hawley, G.J. 2017. Comparative growth trends of five hardwood and montane tree species reveal divergent growth trajectories and response to climate. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 47:743–754. (FY’2016) This article was chosen as an “Editor’s Choice Featured Content” by the Journal and was highlighted on its home page (http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/journal/cjfr) and promoted on social media.
Lini Wollenberg and the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) team
Wollenberg E. The mitigation pillar of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA): targets and options. Agriculture for Development 30:19-22. Accompanying blog: Special Issue of Agriculture for Development on Climate-Smart Agriculture
Subbarao, Guntur; Arango, Jacobo; Masahiro, Kishii; Hooper, A.M.; Yoshihashi, Tadashi; Ando, Y.; Nakahara, Kazuhiko; Deshpande, Santosh; Ortiz-Monasterio, Ivan; Ishitani, Manabu; Peters, Michael; Chirinda, Ngonidzashe; Wollenberg, Eva; Lata, J.C; Gerard, Bruno; Tobita,Satoshi; Rao, Idupulapati; Braun, Hans J.; Kommerell, Victor; Tohme, Joe; Iwanaga, Masa. 2017. Genetic mitigation strategies to tackle agricultural GHG emissions: The case for biological nitrification inhibition technology. Plant Science. 1-4 p. Accompanying blog by Lini: Could nitrogen-efficient crops be a transformative, food-secure solution to reducing nitrous oxide emissions?
Vermeulen S, Wollenberg E. 2017. A rough estimate of the proportion of global emissions from agriculture due to smallholders. CCAFS Info Note. Copenhagen, Denmark: CGIAR Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security. Accompanying blog by Lini: Emissions from smallholder farming may be significant; mitigation recommendations
Wollenberg E, Martius C, Shepherd K, Sommer R. 2017. What is CGIAR doing on soil carbon and climate change? CCAFS blog.
Series of case studies published in late 2016 with co-authors Julie Nash and Gillian Galford were shared widely via CCAFS and USAID. USAID blog with links to all case studies was published this August: Case Studies from Nine Countries Show Climate Change Mitigation Co-benefits from Agricultural Practices that Support Food Security
The CCAFS Annual Report for 2016, published in May 2017, featured several pieces of work by Lini Wollenberg and Meryl Richards, most notably Agricultural emissions reduction target set; call for ambitious action and Study finds strong economic case for investing in agriculture under climate change.