Our research team gave a webinar in the Great Lakes Commission series this week (dated July 25, 2018). The Great Lakes Commission hosts a webinar series on the management of invasive Phragmites in Great Lakes wetlands. Title: A primer on the user-friendly Mondrian model for wetland ecology and invasive species management Presented by: Dr. Bill Currie…
With the spread of invasive Phragmites in the Great Lakes basin, scientists and managers in the region are working together to understand the factors that contribute to the spread of this noxious reed and to identify the best strategies to control it. Phragmites has become established over large areas of shoreline, river banks, embayments, and…
With Stephen Hawking’s recent passing, it made me think about the influence that he has had not only as a physicist but also as a writer for the general scientific audience. In particular, there is a wonderful discussion of models and their role in the epistemology of science in his book The Grand Design (2010, with…
In late February I visited my friend and colleague Jason Martina at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. For several years, Jason and I have been collaborating on augmenting and applying the Mondrian model of wetland community-ecosystem processes. For research funded under a current NASA grant, We are working together to add denitrification and…
Laura Bourgeau-Chavez (Michigan Tech Research Institute), Phyllis Higman (Michigan Natural Features Inventory), and Bill Currie gave a presentation and panel discussion at “The Science, Practice & Art of Restoring Native Ecosystems 2018” conference organized by The Stewardship Network in East Lansing, MI, January 12-13, 2018. We gave a tag-team presentation titled “Sharing insights on invasive…
Gaining a better understanding of carbon (C) dynamics across the terrestrial and aquatic landscape has become a major research initiative in ecosystem ecology. Wetlands store a large portion of the global soil C, but are also highly dynamic ecosystems in terms of hydrology and N cycling, and are one of the most invaded habitats worldwide.…
This work represents an interdisciplinary collaboration among Paige Fischer (project leader), with training in sociology and human geography; Seth Guikema, an engineer with expertise in climate-driven hazards and human decision-making regarding risk; Gretchen Keppel-Aleks, a climate scientist at UM Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, who focuses on modeling climate impacts on vegetation including forests…
We recently had a paper accepted in Ecological Economics, led by Hui Xu, a recent PhD student advised by Dan Brown in SEAS. The research assessed the trade-offs in the abatement of phosphorous runoff into Lake Erie that could be gained with different land uses that have less P runoff than fertilized cropland, versus the…
Erin Barton spent summer 2017 on an internship working with The Nature Conservancy, Colorado Chapter, on their Sustainable Grazing Lands Program. She was awarded this internship as part of the Wyss Scholarship, funded by the Wyss Foundation, which provides funding for students focosed on conservation issues in the American West. Describing her intership, Erin wrote,…
