Inés Ibáñez, a forest ecologist and assistant professor at the University of Michigan, has received a $750,000 award from the National Science Foundation to study forest dynamics under global change.
Research being led by SNRE Professor Don Zak has received an additional five years of federal support, enabling researchers to continue an unprecedented study of how changes in climate are affecting the DNA of forests. The new round of National Science Foundation funding allows work to continue through 2018. The experiments are taking place in northern Michigan, and examine how climate change is influencing the activity of soil microbes, which decay dead leaves and roots in a process that controls the amount of carbon stored in soils.
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.
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.
Scientists recently discovered nitrogen that falls from the atmosphere in acid rain can influence large tracts of sugar maples in North America. The atmospheric nitrogen in acid rain can affect forest ecosystems by acidifying soils and causing nutrient imbalances. Sugar maples in northeastern North America are especially vulnerable. Vast maple areas have been affected by this acidification process, which depletes soil calcium in already calcium-poor soils such as those of the Eastern United States.
Two School of Natural Resources and Environment professors have received a National Science Foundation grant from its Environmental Sustainability program to create models that can better predict the life-cycle environmental impacts of bioenergy systems.
Three University of Michigan researchers, including SNRE's Shelie Miller, are among the 85 recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the nation's highest honor for professionals at the outset of their independent research careers. Ten federal departments and agencies annually nominate scientists and engineers whose work shows exceptional promise for leadership at the frontiers of scientific knowledge. Participating agencies award these talented researchers up to five years of funding to further their work in support of critical government missions.
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.