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…
Mondrian is a computer model of wetland community and ecosystem ecology (Currie et al. 2014, Ecological Modelling 282: 69-82). Its main strength is that it spans four levels of organization in a unified, integrated fashion: (1) individual plants and their physiology; (2) population-level processes including fecundity and mortality; (3) community-level processes including competition among native plant…
We recently began a new NASA-funded project, continuing the work with a large collaborative team to link land use, socioeconomic drivers, and climate to the hydrology and water quality in large-river watersheds and the effects on Great Lakes coastal wetlands. In past work, the Michigan team developed the Mondrian model of community-ecosystem processes to better…
Congratulations to Master’s students Kate Keeley, Elliott Kurtz, Luxian Li, Ed Waisanen, Yu Xin, and Fan Zhang, who completed their SEAS Master’s Project “Supporting conservation and decision-making in the Northwoods: Mapping forest values, services, and threats.” The client for this project was The Nature Conservancy of Michigan, with Doug Pearsall as the client contact. Working…
