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Tag: Northern Arizona University

  • Into the unknown: NASA space laser provides answers to a rainforest canopy mystery

    Into the unknown: NASA space laser provides answers to a rainforest canopy mystery

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    Newswise — We know less about the rainforest canopy, where most of the world’s species live than we do about the surface of Mars or the bottom of the ocean. However, that is about to change thanks to GEDI—a NASA space laser that has provided a detailed structure of the world’s rainforests for the first time ever. 

    “Tropical forests are mainly unstratified especially in Amazonia and regions with lower fertility or higher temperatures” reads the title of the recently published paper in Environmental Research Ecology that details the laser’s findings. Authored by researchers from the U.S., the U.K. and Singapore, Christopher Doughty, professor in NAU’s School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems and first author on the study, believes this research is crucial—and long overdue—in finding out more about the tropical ecosystems. 

    “Most of the world’s species live in tropical forests and most of those make use of the canopy, and yet, we know so little,” Doughty said. “Rainforest structure matters because it controls how animals access resources and escape predators, and these findings will help us understand tropical forest animal’s susceptibility to climate change.” 

    Research into forest canopies has come a long way. Early western visitors described tropical forests as horror vacui (nature abhorring a vacuum) since vegetation was “anxious to fill every available space with stems and leaves.” Later, as scientists began to study tropical forests, they categorized the lush flora into forest layers—a thick upper crown and a thick mid-layer with a thin layer in between. However, this was only observed in a few well-studied locations. The structure across most tropical forests was still unknown. 

    Then came GEDI, the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation. 

    “A key difference between GEDI and many other satellites is its measurement of three-dimensional canopy structure,” said Hao Tang, professor in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and co-author on the paper. Tang, who is also a principal investigator at the NUS Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions, added, “Conventional satellites, while providing valuable data on land cover and canopy greenness, often lack the detailed vertical information offered by GEDI. This vertical information is crucial for understanding ecosystem dynamics, carbon storage and biodiversity that cannot be easily seen from typical satellite images.”

    Launched in late 2018, NASA’s GEDI shoots an invisible laser from the International Space Station into Earth’s forests thousands of times a day. Depending on the amount of energy returned to the satellite, it can provide a detailed 3D map that shows where the leaves and branches are in a forest and how they change over time. This will help researchers understand the amounts of biomass and carbon forests store and how much they lose when disturbed—vital information for understanding Earth’s carbon cycle and how it is changing. 

    Doughty, Tang and the other authors of the paper analyzed GEDI data across all tropical forests and found that the structure was simpler and more exposed to sunlight than previously thought. Data also revealed that most tropical forests (80 percent of the Amazon and 70 percent of Southeast Asia and the Congo Basin) have a peak in the number of leaves at 15 meters instead of at the canopy top, debunking the fullest-at-the-top theory of early researchers. While forests vary, a key finding that seemed to remain constant in every scenario was that deviation from more ideal conditions (like lower fertility or higher temperatures) leads to shorter, less stratified forests with lower biomass. 

    “It was really surprising to see the dominance of this structure type because it differs from what we had learned in the classic textbooks on the topic,” Doughty said. “These finding will not only help us understand how the millions of species that live in a rainforest canopy might acclimate to changing temperatures, but also how much carbon these forests hold and how good they are at fighting climate change.” 

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  • Plant ecologist awarded NSF grant for restoring the culturally important Emory oak

    Plant ecologist awarded NSF grant for restoring the culturally important Emory oak

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    Newswise — Assistant professor Sara Souther of Northern Arizona University’s School of Earth and Sustainability (SES) is the principal investigator on a major new project focused on restoring a tree species important to the cultural heritage of tribal communities in the Southwest. 

    Acorns from the Emory oak tree are a critically important resource for the Western Apache tribal nations—including the Yavapai-Apache, Tonto Apache, San Carlos Apache and White Mountain Apache in east and central Arizona—who use it both for food and cultural and ceremonial purposes. Groves of Emory oak have been declining in health and yielding fewer acorns with each harvest for several decades due to loss of habitat, fire suppression, livestock grazing, groundwater reductions, species competition and climate change. 

    With $1.5 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, Souther will launch a five-year project starting in March entitled “DISES: Restoration of a southwestern cultural keystone species: Integrating socio‐ecological systems to predict resilience of traditional acorn harvest by western Apache communities.” Co-PIs on the multidisciplinary conservation project, representing SES and NAU’s School of Forestry as well as the departments of biology, sociology and geography, planning & recreation, are associate professor Clare Aslan, Regents’ professor Peter Fulé, assistant professor Alark Saxena, associate teaching professor Amanda Stan, associate professor Diana Stuart, professor Andi Thode and associate professor Amy Whipple. 

    “I am extremely excited to have the resources to explore this amazing social-ecological system. For a long time, I’ve felt that wild harvest and traditional ecological practices and traditions have been viewed as niche issues within the world of conservation. It is thrilling to see this work elevated by the NSF,” Souther said.  

    “We are taking a holistic landscape-level approach to understand the threats to these woodlands. Emory oaks are a cultural keystone species for western Apache tribes and the dominant oak in the Madrean oak woodlands, which cover around 80,000 km2 across the Southwest and US-Mexico borderlands,” she said. “Despite this, the Madrean oak system is understudied. In order to conserve Emory oak, we need to quickly learn a lot about this ecosystem, and in particular, we must understand what constrains population growth and viability.” 

    Souther’s work has always focused on understanding ecocultural interactions, supporting communities connected to these landscapes and conserving land and traditions. This funding will support these goals, providing the opportunity to rapidly learn about the Madrean oak woodlands as a coupled human and natural system, she said. 

    This project builds on work done through the Emory Oak Collaborative Tribal Restoration Initiative  (EOCTRI), a collaborative partnership between NAU, the U.S. Forest Service and five different Apache tribes. Their goal is to restore and protect Emory oak stands to ensure the long-term persistence of Emory oak using tribal traditional ecological knowledge to guide goals and activities. Since 2018, the partners have worked together to identify and assess important Emory oak stands, complete clearances and begin implementing restoration and protection activities for several groves. With this new project, the team’s goals are to expand their knowledge of the Emory oak system, support the goals of EOCTRI—to conserve Emory oak trees and the traditional acorn harvest by Western Apache tribes—and provide knowledge to the EOCTRI group according to the ethics of the Chi’Chil Advisory Committee. Watch this video to learn more about EOCTRI’s efforts. 

    Souther’s project also is related to an initiative that was launched to better understand how to manage ecocultural resources on public lands—the Tribal Nations Botanical Research Collaborative (TNBRC), a U.S. Forest Service Citizen Science program in which volunteers collect information on traditionally used plants that have cultural, medicinal or economic values important to tribal communities. They record observations of these plants using the iNaturalist app on their cell phones. Scientists gather and analyze the data and use it to shape conservation and land management goals for increased sustainability. 

    Research related to Souther’s roots in rural Appalachia 

    “My work with the Emory oak builds on my past research on traditional use plant conservation in Appalachia,” Souther said. “I grew up in West Virginia, which has a rich heritage of harvesting wild plants for food, medicine and other essentials. It wasn’t until I went to Paraguay, as a Peace Corps volunteer, that I realized how much of this traditional knowledge had been lost in Appalachian culture. In Paraguay, small children knew the names and uses of all the plants growing in forests and fields nearby—which meant that most children had a working knowledge of hundreds of plants. Meanwhile, in West Virginia, most of this ecological knowledge was held by the elderly and was not actively passed down to youth. I could see our Appalachian culture disappearing, and for me, this ecocultural erosion was devastating. Harvest expeditions in Appalachia, whether to pick ramps (wild onions), blueberries or pawpaw (a fruit related to custard-apples), were part of the experience growing up in West Virginia and important for connecting with family and the land. More broadly, I feel that maintaining human connections to the land is key to human health and well-being and critical to inspire conservation of our wild spaces.” 

    Project designed to involve students from underrepresented groups  

    Souther is dedicated to outreach, mentorship and training to promote the participation of underrepresented groups in STEM, and she is using this project as an opportunity to hire several students. Souther is also a co-PI with Amy Whipple on another project designed to increase diversity in STEM targeting post-baccalaureate training for underrepresented groups, principally Indigenous communities.  

    “Coming from rural Appalachia, I connect with students who may feel like outsiders in STEM fields. It is extremely important to me to support underrepresented groups as they navigate graduate school and academia. My commitment to increasing diversity in STEM fields is personal, since support from NSF and university faculty launched my career, and also practical, because I believe that the sciences will be strengthened by diverse opinions and thinkers.” 

    The team will recruit four graduate students for this project as well as undergraduate students to support field work in the summer. Applications are available on the lab website. 

    “The broader impacts of this project will be to advance understanding and predictive modeling of stochastic drought events, which will likely drive ecological change in the Southwest and other arid regions,” Souther said. “Integrating information from Native American tribal collaborators, we will contribute to diversity and inclusion in environmental resource management, ensuring that Indigenous perspectives and needs are incorporated into decision-making.” 

    She is also working on a two-year project funded through a $538,203 award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration entitled, “Projecting socio-ecological impacts of drought in southwestern ecosystems to prioritize restoration initiatives.” Stuart and Steven Chischilly from the Navajo Technical Institute are co-PIs on this project. 

    About Northern Arizona University 

    Founded in 1899, Northern Arizona University is a community-engaged, high-research university that delivers an exceptional student-centered experience to its nearly 28,000 students in Flagstaff, at 22 statewide campuses and online. Building on a 123-year history of distinctive excellence, NAU aims to be the nation’s preeminent engine of opportunity, vehicle of economic mobility and driver of social impact by delivering equitable postsecondary value in Arizona and beyond. NAU is committed to meeting talent with access and excellence through its impactful academic programs and enriching experiences, paving the way to a better future for the diverse students it serves and the communities they represent.  

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  • Wildlife disease ecologist launches project to help DoD monitor quality of bird habitats on military installations

    Wildlife disease ecologist launches project to help DoD monitor quality of bird habitats on military installations

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    Newswise — The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) owns military installations on nearly 27 million acres all over the country—roughly equivalent in size to Virginia—and oversees these lands through a network of natural resource managers. According to the DoD, the program supports “the military’s testing and training mission by protecting its biological resources… and working to ensure the long-term sustainability of our nation’s priceless natural heritage.” One of the program’s top priorities is monitoring and maintaining populations of threatened and endangered species (TES) of birds—especially those that eat insects and other arthropods like spiders, which have been particularly hard hit.  

    Monitoring the quality of the birds’ habitats, including their typical diets of insects, is one of the most critical ways scientists investigate declining bird populations. The tools the military land managers use to assess diets and habitats are crucial, but the current methods of measuring habitat quality related to the birds’ food resources are time consuming, expensive and require specific biological expertise. 

    To this end, associate professor Jeff Foster of Northern Arizona University’s Department of Biological Sciences and the Pathogen and Microbiome Institute (PMI) was recently awarded a grant by the DoD for a new study, “Demonstration of Metabarcoding for Monitoring Bird Species Habitat Quality on DoD Installations.” This three-year, $900,000 project will focus on five insectivorous species on four military sites: 

    • Golden-cheeked Warbler (Setophaga chrysoparia) and Black-capped Vireo (Vireo atricapilla) at Fort Hood, Texas 
    • Least Bell’s Vireo (Vireo bellii pusillus) at Camp Pendleton, California 
    • Golden-winged Warbler (Vermivora chrysoptera) at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin 
    • Oahu Elepaio (Chasiempis ibidis) at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii  

    Advanced approach focuses on bioinformatics, metabarcoding 

    Metabarcoding is a technique that enables scientists to identify multiple species of plants or animals on a large scale based on rapid, high-throughput environmental DNA sequencing, which represents a huge technological step forward.  

    “We’ll assess habitat quality by using advanced genetic approaches to measure arthropod food resources in bird diets and from the vegetation on which these birds forage,” Foster said. “Our three primary objectives are to demonstrate the effectiveness of metabarcoding of bird diets and food resources; compare this genetic approach to conventional approaches that employ visual identification of arthropods using microscopes; provide user-friendly guidance to military land managers so they can understand the process and use this approach for monitoring in the future. 

    “The bioinformatics can be challenging and daunting if you’re first getting into DNA metabarcoding, so we’ll provide an established workflow that we can share with the land managers.” 

    The team will collect fecal samples from the birds (bird poop) and arthropod samples, perform bioinformatic and chemical composition analyses, validate the technology by comparing it to conventional methods, develop guidance documents and lead hands-on technical workshops for the military land managers. This will be the most in-depth diet analysis of birds on military installations done to date. 

    Foster brings his expertise as well as that of PMI to the project. “There’s much more to metabarcoding work than simply sequencing a gene. And here’s where our team excels. We use tools developed over the past 13 years for analyzing the human microbiome. NAU professor Greg Caporaso and his team at PMI have developed many of these tools, so we have considerable technical expertise in analyses, including understanding reference libraries of sequences and developing the analytical software.” 

    Collaborators include military scientists and undergraduate researcher 

    Foster will work closely with co-principal investigators Jinelle Sperry and Aron Katz from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineer Research and Development Center’s Construction Engineer Research Laboratory, as well as with collaborators at each of the installations. 

    NAU undergraduate researcher Hannah Brosius is working on the project with Foster and PMI researcher Alexandra Gibson. Brosius, who will be assisting with the lab work and analyses, said, “I’m excited about this project because the analysis of bird diets from feces will help us figure out why these endangered birds might be at risk. It’s fun to be able to take a fecal sample from a species; you can learn a lot using DNA to understand how an animal lives.”  

    She is looking forward to her future as a veterinarian. “I’m interested in lab work, which allows me to focus on a project and have results quickly. This research experience will be important for veterinary school and will expand my understanding of biology.” 

    Project to benefit TES monitoring across DoD sites 

    The project’s outcomes will have multiple benefits that will help DoD land managers monitor threatened and endangered species.  

    “It’s an effective and cost-efficient way to measure habitat quality, particularly as it relates to a key factor regulating insectivorous bird abundance—arthropod food resources,” Foster said. “The technology can be deployed at any DoD site where understanding diet or habitat quality is necessary for TES monitoring of vertebrate taxa. Population surveys can assess the current abundance and distribution of TES but determining the specific factors limiting their populations adds additional complexity. This method will not only give DoD natural resource managers the ability to distinguish poor versus high-quality habitat, but will provide critical information about restoration, habitat recovery from disturbance and a baseline of prey availability should arthropod populations decline regionally in the future.”  

    In addition, numerous other bird species are on the list of DoD Priority Species and could benefit from this technology as well as other taxa such as amphibians, reptiles and small mammals. 

    About Northern Arizona University 

    Founded in 1899, Northern Arizona University is a community-engaged, high-research university that delivers an exceptional student-centered experience to its nearly 28,000 students in Flagstaff, at 22 statewide campuses and online. Building on a 123-year history of distinctive excellence, NAU aims to be the nation’s preeminent engine of opportunity, vehicle of economic mobility and driver of social impact by delivering equitable postsecondary value in Arizona and beyond. NAU is committed to meeting talent with access and excellence through its impactful academic programs and enriching experiences, paving the way to a better future for the diverse students it serves and the communities they represent.  

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