Schmitt Fellow Blogs

I’m starting a project in May/June in which I’m studying nutrient transformations in streams and rivers in Indiana and Michigan.  I’m going to try and document, as best as I can, the research process that I go through while performing this study.  The impetus for the project is a classical stream ecology concept, known as the River Continuum Concept (let me know if you want the citation).  Basically, this concept states that the biological community changes as you move from small, headwater sites into larger, open river systems, primarily because of a change in tree cover and the source of nutrients and energy.  I am hoping to use this concept to see if process influencing nutrient retention also change as you move from headwaters to large rivers.  The first step of this project was to find potential study sites.  To do this, I spent my entire spring break in ‘Big Red’, one of our lab vehicles, driving throughout Northeastern IN and pretty much all of western MI (not the UP though, sadly).  I used a stream network map that I developed in GIS to identify potential study sites based on the size of the river.  I made maps for the St. Joseph River watershed in N IN and S MI, the Kalamazoo River watershed (SW MI), and the Manistee River watershed (NW MI) and then hit the road.  I brought along a handy Gazeteer (basically an atlas + topographic map with streams depicted on the maps) and a bunch of bottles for water samples.  I proceeded to drive all day, looking for access sites on large rivers such as the St. Joseph River:

I also went and found intermediately sized streams like the S Branch of the Elkhart River:

and small headwater sites like the Croft Ditch in Albion, IN:



I was able to find public access sites for most of the large rivers at places such as city parks, canoe launches, and boat ramps, but most of the smaller sites were located on private property.  Therefore, my next step in this research project is to contact land-owners and request permission to access streams on their property.  I am currently sending letters to land owners and hopefully will have finalized my study sites in a few weeks.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

Just had to share a photo of my favorite site I found from my spring break travels.  This is the Pine River, a main tributary of the Manistee River in NW MI.  The Pine is a popular recreational river as it has a healthy fishery and is a good canoe trip (anyone want to go canoeing with me this summer?)

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Are you a fan of cooking and eating exotic, yet delicious cuisine?  Ever wonder how to make you’re eating habits more eco-friendly?  Why not try becoming an invasivore – that is, one who consumes invasive species.  Some of my fellow graduate students here at Notre Dame started a blog posting recipes as well as general information regarding invasive species.  You can check out the blog at http://www.invasivore.org (note that they have an April Fool’s joke up there currently).  Invasivory is an up-and-coming food movement similar to the locavore movement (eating local products).  The invasivore blog was recently featured in a live science interview: http://www.livescience.com/13426-invasive-species-invasivory-recipes-diet.html.  Try out some of their tasty recipes.

AJ

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I spent last week driving around Northern IN, and all across the state of MI looking for study sites for a research project I’m hoping to get started this summer (more coming on the trip soon).  As 8 – 10 h of the day every day last week was simply spent driving from one potential site to another, I got a lot of radio listening done.  Typically when I’m driving I enjoy talk radio, whether it be sports, political, whatever, but I ALWAYS start my day off with some NPR.  Boy do I love me some morning edition…

All last week (and it’s continued this week), was devoted to the disaster in Japan, as it should have been.  This was and continues to be a truly harrowing and frightening situation.  As I’m sure you are aware, one of the main issues that has come from the earthquake is the damage that was done to a major nuclear power plant.  It seems like the situation is relatively under control now (they finally got power back to the reactors to allow for pumps to run cooling water over the reactor rods: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42206728/ns/world_news-asiapacific/), but throughout last week everyone was using the possibility of a major meltdown as an argument to completely abandon nuclear power.

I have two major issues with the argument that the Japan disaster can/should be used as an argument against nuclear power.  First off, the levels of radiation emitted from this ‘huge nuclear disaster’ are so low that there will likely be no long term effects (except for the safety workers at the plant, who are, in my mind, akin to the fire-fighters entering the twin towers on 9/11).  Then there were issues about radiation infecting the milk supply, but it doesn’t seem like this will really be a problem unless you really LOVE milk (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/03/22/134746912/radioactive-milk-only-a-danger-after-58-000-glasses?ft=1&f=1001).  Luckily, no major meltdown occurred and the plant seems under control now.

But this first point doesn’t really matter, in light of my second point.  Those who are using this earthquake-caused nuclear scare against nuclear power as a whole need to realize, the earthquake in Japan was an 8.9!  An 8.9! That’s extreme to the extreme.  If we were to abandon every single technology because extreme events can make them dangerous, would humans be able to fly from the US to Australia in under 24 hours?  Would we have landed on the moon?  No, extreme events happen, and you have to deal with them.

Finally, and I don’t actually have any stats to back this up (sorry), but I would be willing to bet that deaths caused by the coal/natural gas industry vastly overshadow any deaths from the nuclear power industry, even if we had a chernobyl every year – and nuclear power doesn’t emit greenhouse gases.

I’m not saying that I think we should switch to 100% nuclear power, but the US and the world as a whole need a diverse energy portfolio, we can’t put all of our eggs in any one basket, but we shouldn’t completely throw any baskets off the table, either.

Sorry if you disagree, this is just my opinion.  And in case all of this got you down: LOOK, A PUPPY!



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One of my big pet-peeves is when people use the term global warming as an excuse for why they don’t believe in global climate change.  Global warming is a loaded term, as warming brings up ideas of everyday weather as opposed to long-term climatic trends.  At least that’s how I’ve always felt, but I don’t have any proof or science to back up my opinion.

That is, until now.  A forthcoming article in the quarterly Journal of Public Opinion shows that more people state they believe in climate change than in global warming.  For a brief review of the journal article, check:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110308173242.htm

AJ

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Hello!

My name is Sheri Sanders and I am a first year Ph.D. student at the University of Notre Dame, and I am a herpetological phylogeneticist.  Ever since I was a small child, it was my dream to be a herpetological phylogeneticist, much to the dismay of my parents…

That’s a lie.  I actually didn’t even know what “phylogenetics” was until I was about 21 years old.  I knew that I liked reptiles (“herpetology” is the study of reptiles) and that I really liked naming and placing things within an easily understandable maps of relationships (“phylogentics” is the study of evolutionary relationships and, basically, the making of species trees).  However, I also loved pretty much anything remotely related to biology and ended up wandering around in the field for a while before I found my home.  I have been a tiger keeper, biology/anatomy teacher, elephant behaviorist, hyena poop researcher, monkey brain mapper, veterinary student, and amature computer programmer.  I had very little idea of what real research was and how various fields differed and interacted when I started college, and I was always hesitant to give up on any of my passions.

wandering the field… I wonder if these Zebra have the answers…

A pretty divergence into monkey brains

Field work with Sabine Map Turtles

This is where this blog comes in.  I have managed to navigate my career into a intersection between numerous fields, namely computer science, evolution, and ecology sprinkled with a pinch of mathematical modeling, composition, and now educational outreach.  This happened partly by luck, partly by persistence, and partly by sheer stubbornness.  It is my hope that you will join me in learning the ins and outs of what I have gotten myself into and how to straddle the line of disciplines.

Basically, I want to break down the walls between the lab and the classroom as well as the boundaries between subjects, exposing pre-college students and teachers to options I would have loved to know about before college.  I hope we can work together to accomplish this lofty, but attainable, goal!

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On last Tuesday (Feb 22, 2011), Dr. Jason McLachlan, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Notre Dame talked about Conservation and Climate Change at our monthly Science Cafe.  It was the biggest crowd I’ve seen at a Science Cafe (I’ve been co-organizing the Cafe since September of 2010), with approximately 90% of the audience being first time attendees.  The Science Cafe organizers were really excited about this turnout and the level of interest in the audience – Jason wasn’t able to get through all of his slides because the discussion between the speaker and the audience was so stimulating.

In case you haven’t been able to attend some Cafe’s due to scheduling conflicts, don’t worry – you can watch every Science Cafe from the comfort of your living room.  On NDiTunes, there is a Science Cafe podcast which allows you to download audio-vizual files of previous science cafes.  I just posted the podcast from Dr. McLachlan’s cafe (apologies for the audio, there was some distortion in the microphone so the quality isn’t the best) and I also posted a podcast from Dr. Ed Bensman’s talk about modelling climate change that he presented in October (we thought that this had been posted a long time ago, but it is now finally available!)

If you’re hoping to watch a podcast, you can do so by following this guide:

0.  Install iTunes

1.  Access the iTunes store (don’t worry, the podcasts are free)

2.  Click on the tab for iTunes U at the top of the iTunes store

3.  Click on the Universities & Colleges iTunes U quicklink at the top right of iTunes

4.  Click on the University of Notre Dame link

5.  Click on the Science Link under the Categories tab (approximately 1/4 of the way down the page)

6.  Click the Science Cafe thumbnail

7.  Select which podcast you want to watch and click play (or you can subscribe to the podcast to automatically receive updates).

Please let me know (areisin1@nd.edu) if you have any questions or concerns regarding the podcasts or the Science Cafe in general.

Also, I am going to be starting a personal blog with a different username (ajreisinger) but am still having some difficulties posting on multiple blogs with this username, so keep an eye out for my other blog.

Have a great weekend.

AJ

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Belovsky Lab UNDERC-East Flagel Research

I’m David Flagel, a third year Ph.D student from the Belovsky Lab.  We are located in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame.   I am interested in how various mammal populations influence forest regeneration and in turn the plant community as a whole.  During my undergraduate I did field research on seed predation in the tropical forests of Panama.  My current work focuses on how recolonizing gray wolves may be generating various trophic cascades in Great Lakes forests.   Trophic cascades occur when a predator influences populations lower on the food chain (i.e. deer, mesopredators, rodents) to a great enough degree that the plant community is also affected, including positive changes in biodiversity and physical structure.

Myself and a large male wolf that we captured, tranquilized, and equipped with a tracking collar in the UNDERC-East forest.

I would love to work with K-12 STEM educators on projects demonstrating the importance of predation, herbivory, and granivory in community structure, even right here in Indiana’s woodlands!  If you have any suggestions for how I could help, please message me.  Some ideas include seed removal counts and small demo exclosures.  I could also blog about my use of the scientific method, as well as discuss the ethics and cautions that must be taken working with mammals (especially protected species).

Cheers!

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Hello!

My name is Kerri Citterbart. I’m a first year PhD student in Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. I work in the Belovsky lab with several other graduate students working on different community ecology questions. This is my lab webpage:

http://www.nd.edu/~kcitterb/Home_Page.html

If you click on the research tab on the top right, you can see some of my past work experiences and my current research ideas. I spent the last two years, working in environmental education, teaching school children and the public about animals and the environment. As a graduate student, I would like to continue with this work by interacting with the K-12 Stem community. When I begin my research this summer, I plan to use this blog to discuss the scientific method as I research the affect of bison and cattle grazing on grassland birds and their predators.  There will be more info on that soon.

I would love to have you join me as I being my research journey!

Me and a Barred Owl educating students

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Here’s an interesting article about genetically modified (GM) foods from a NY times food blog:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/why-arent-g-m-o-foods-labeled/?smid=tw-bittman&seid=auto

I’m interested in this issue because my lab has done a lot of work on how GM corn enters streams and may negatively effect stream invertebrates.  Additionally, there’s a decent amount of research going on in my lab studying Pacific salmon effects on stream ecosystems.  The articles my advisor has written about GM corn have drawn a lot of press and there was quite a bit of backlash from the agricultural community.  Just an interesting issue to keep in mind.

AJ

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