Bradley Cardinale, an ecologist and faculty member at the School of Natural Resources & Environment, has been elected to serve on the Science Committee for a new international research initiative called Future Earth.
SNRE Associate Professors Bradley Cardinale and Johannes Foufopoulos co-authored an op-ed piece that appears in today's Detroit News.
A researcher measures the productivity of algae in a stream as part of a research project published in the June 7 edition of the journal Nature.
Twenty years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, 17 prominent ecologists are calling for renewed international efforts to curb the loss of biological diversity, which is compromising nature's ability to provide goods and services essential for human well-being. Over the past two decades, strong scientific evidence has emerged showing that loss of the world's biological diversity reduces the productivity and sustainability of natural ecosystems and decreases their ability to provide society with goods and services like food, wood, fodder, fertile soils, and protection from pests and disease, according to an international team of ecologists led by School of Natural Resources and Environment Associate Professor Bradley Cardinale.
Loss of biodiversity appears to impact ecosystems as much as climate change, pollution and other major forms of environmental stress, according to a new study from an international research team that includes SNRE Assistant Professor Bradley J. Cardinale. The study, published today, is the first comprehensive effort to directly compare the impacts of biological diversity loss to the anticipated effects of a host of other human-caused environmental changes. The results highlight the need for stronger local, national and international efforts to protect biodiversity and the benefits it provides, according to the researchers, based at nine institutions in the United States, Canada and Sweden. (VIEW IMAGES OF SCIENTISTS AT WORK)
More than 3,000 gallons of Huron River water were trucked to the University of Michigan campus recently to create 150 mini-Hurons that are used to study how environmental changes affect freshwater habitats like rivers and streams. The artificial streams are called flumes, and U-M's new $1 million "Flume Room" is in the basement of the Dana Building, home to the School of Natural Resources and Environment. The U-M flume lab is the largest facility of its kind in North America, and possibly the world.
Biologically diverse streams are better at cleaning up pollutants than less rich waterways, and a University of Michigan ecologist says he has uncovered the long-sought mechanism that explains why this is so. Bradley Cardinale used 150 miniature model streams, which use recirculating water in flumes to mimic the variety of flow conditions found in natural streams. He grew between one and eight species of algae in each of the mini-streams, then measured each algae community's ability to soak up nitrate, a nitrogen compound that is a nutrient pollutant of global concern.
Bradley J. Cardinale, who joins SNRE's faculty in January, has received a $2-million National Science Foundation grant as part of the agency's efforts to expand knowledge and understanding of Earth's biodiversity. Assistant Professor Cardinale is the principal investigator on a project titled, "Can evolutionary history predict how changes in biodiversity impact the productivity of ecosystems?" He and his colleagues will examine how evolutionary processes among algae generate and maintain the diversity of genes, and whether genetic diversity can explain the productivity of freshwater lakes.