Volume 12 / Winter 2013

Chris Neill Appointed Director of

Ecosystems Center

Senior scientist and the Phyllis and Charles M. Rosenthal Director of the Brown-MBL Partnership, Dr. Chris Neill at the MBL, is assuming the directorship of the MBL Ecosystems Center. “I am honored to lead an extraordinary group of scientists at MBL that in many ways pioneered modern ecosystem science,” said Neill. “This is an important time for our Center and for our global ecosystem. As humans play a greater and greater role in shaping the planet, we need more than ever to understand the earth’s basic ecological life support systems and to apply that know-ledge to sustain our biological heritage, and human well-being.”

Neill has a strong commitment to undergraduate education, and is key faculty member in the SES, lecturing in the core courses, and leading core labs on forest productivity and watershed dynamics. He has advised more than two dozen SES students on independent research over the past decade. His own research focuses on understanding how large-scale changes in land use alter soils, emissions of greenhouse gases, and runoff of water and nutrients into streams and rivers. For more than two decades he has studied how deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon affects soil fertility and stream habitat. He is also examining how intensification of farming in the Amazon and tropical Africa changes regional environmental quality. Neill has a long-standing interest in applied environ-mental research on Cape Cod and the Islands. He works on the ecology and restoration of ponds and grasslands in coastal Massachusetts in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy, the Buzzards Bay Coalition, and other local organizations.

Faculty and students kayaking at Plum Island marshes, site of one of the long-term ecological studies at the Ecosystems Center, during a weekend field trip in 2012.

Alumni Victorious in Cape Cod Marathon

Relay; Whales Leap with Joy!

Runners pose on a crisp October Sunday after the Cape Cod Marathon (left to right, bottom row, students Arianna Goodman and Alex Guest, head lab instructor, Rich McHorney, alumni Melissa Campbell (’10) and Stephanie Oleksyk (’06)*; Top Row, course TA and alumna, Carrie Harris (’09), students Liz de la Reguera, Aliza Ray, Jo Jensen, TA and alumna Alice Carter (’10), faculty member Jimmy Nelson and alums Will Longo (’06), Will Daniels (’06), Lucy Robins (’06).and Fiona Jevon (’11). The Alumni team of Daniels, Jevon, Longo, Oleksyk and Robins crushed the student and faculty teams, finishing 63rd overall in a field of 195 with a terrific time of 3:39:39.

As intensive and rigorous as the SES program is, students and faculty still find plenty of time for fun. Weekend field trips Whale Watching off Provincetown, exploring the Plum Island Estuary by kayak and challenging each other in friendly competition during the Cape Cod Marathon Relay, are just a few of the activities SESer’s partake in during the program.

SES student, Liz de la Reguera (Dickinson College), snapped this remarkable award winning photo during the program’s annual whale watching trip in 2012.

Alumni Focus on Environmental Health

There is a strong link between a healthy environment and human health. Climate change, spread of invasive species, and human overpopulation are broadening the range of tropical diseases and accelerating the emergence of new zoonotic diseases (diseases that jump from animals to humans, e.g. AIDS, bird-flu). Control of diseases transmitted by animal vectors requires an understand-ing of their ecology (think lyme ticks, mice and deer, mosquitos and malaria). Environmental contamination with toxic metals, hydrocarbons or pesticides whether in the water, air or soils is harming humans world-wide. And of course, at the root of global environmental problems is the burgeoning human population – effective family planning is essential to the long-term well-being of society and ecological systems. A number of SES alums have devoted their careers to public and environmental health.

Cynthia Eldridge attended SES in 1998, graduating from Wellesley College in 2000. She returned to MBL/SES as a teaching assistant in the Microbial Methods elective of the SES program in 2001. She eventually moved to the Institute for Global Health at University of California, San Francisco; and her interest in public health policy, admini-

stration and finance grew. Returning to school she earned an advanced degree in Health Policy and Planning from the London School of Economics as well as a Master’s degree in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in ‘06

Based in Nairobi, Kenya, Cynthia now works for Marie Stopes International, one of the largest international family planning organizations in the world, where she is Associate Director of Health Markets and Social Franchising. Cynthia is the director for the African Health Markets Equity partnership, a $60 million investment by the Gates Foundation and the United Kingdom’s Dept. for International Development. dedicated to improving access to quality health care in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana by franchising over 2000 clinics that offer family planning services, as well as treatment of malaria, diarrhea, HIV and TB.

Adena Greenbaum (SES ’99) studied heavy metal contamination in salt marshes while in the SES program. After graduating from Wellesley in 2001, she worked as research analyst at an environmental consulting firm where she reviewed the standard for arsenic in drinking water, conducted a cumulative exposure study, and developed methodol-ogies to address contaminated soils at Superfund sites,. She entered medical school at Johns

Hopkins University in 2003 earning both an M.D. and Masters in Public Health by 2008. During her training and residency she worked on the epidemiology of haemophilus influenza, an often fatal childhood disease, in India, and studied the effectiveness of Antiretroviral Therapy in HIV/Aids populations in the U.S.

She is now a real life “bug-hunter” at the Center’s for Disease Control (CDC) just like Kate Winslet in the movie, Contagion. While at CDC, she has worked on identifying a novel strain of influenza that occurred during fall, 2011 in Pennsylvania, and evaluated a severe respiratory disease surveillance program in Cambodia. She also developed an approach to estimating the severity of pneumonia in a South African community with high HIV and TB prevalence, assessed the knowledge, attitudes, and practices towards influenza vaccination in Thailand and evalu-ated alcohol abuse as a risk factor for severe influenza outcomes.

Adena writes “Having the foundation in ecosystems science helped lay the groundwork for my interests in the interaction between the environment and human health, an area I’m not sure I would have pursued without the background SES provided. I draw from the scientific, analytical, and presentation skills I learned during the program all the time. SES was one of the first places I was introduced to these skills, and I’m so happy to have that foundation - they are directly related to the work I’m doing now, make me better at my job, and some are things I wouldn’t have learned anywhere else in my training.”

Contact us to learn more

Email SES@mbl.edu

Phone 508 289-7777

SES faculty member, Bruce Peterson, awarded 2013 Redfield Prize by ASLO

Most successful scientists hope to have one important breakthrough during their careers that merits wide scale recognition by the scientific community. Bruce Peterson has made major contributions to ecosystems science in at least three distinct areas. For his outstanding work, he has been awarded the 2013 American Society of Limnology & Oceanography’s (ASLO) Redfield Prize for Lifetime Achievement.

Early in his career, Peterson applied the concepts of ecosystem stoichiometry and mass balance that he lectures about during the SES program to generate new insights into carbon sequestration in the deep sea. In 1979, together with Richard Eppley, he published a ground breaking article in the journal Nature, “Particulate matter flux and planktonic new production in the deep ocean.” This paper, which has been cited over 1100 times, advanced the notion that the amount of phytoplankton production supported by upwelled nitrate (so-called “new production”) must be balanced by an equivalent amount of carbon that sinks below the mixed layer. This idea, quantified as the “f-ratio”, shaped the direction of research in biological oceanography for several decades.

Peterson also pioneered the use of naturally occurring differences in the relative abundance of stable isotopes of three elements, 15N, 13C and 35S, in organisms to deduce trophic structure within salt marshes. This work, published initially in the journal Science in 1985, led to the broad application of multiple stable isotopes in food web studies. Most recently, Peterson has focused on the impacts of climate change on the water budget of the Arctic Ocean, assessing how increases in the freshwater flow from major rivers in Siberia and the Canadian Arctic might alter North Atlantic Deep Water formation. Cold, salty, and therefore dense surface waters flow from the Arctic Ocean to the North Atlantic and sink, initiating deep ocean currents that drive the Global Thermohaline Circulation (GTC). The GTC also moves heat back to the North Atlantic through the Gulf Stream. If the GTC were to slow or stop, it could cause rapid, dramatic cooling in eastern North America and western Europe. Peterson discusses these ideas about abrupt climate change in the SES core courses.

SES prepares students for unique and meaningful research opportunities. Nine Students, 40% of the Class of 2011, Completed Internships with SES Faculty during Summer 2012

Anika Aarons (Mount Holyoke College) — Carbon transport to the deep sea.

Under the guidance of SES faculty member, Dr. Maureen Conte, who leads the NSF funded Ocean Flux Program (OFP), Anika participated in a cruise aboard the R/V Atlantic Explorer to the OFP sediment trap deployment site located 75 km SE of Bermuda. Particle fluxes to the deep Sargasso Sea have been measured at this site since 1978 generating the longest running time-series of its kind. These data provide insights into the magnitude and temporal variability in the ocean's “biological pump,” an important mechanism for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Conte’s research has focused on identifying unique chemical biomarkers to characterize the particle fluxes. Anika returned to Conte’s lab in Woods Hole after the cruise to analyze the lipid composition of organic material collected from the sediment traps using gas-chromatography/mass spectrometry. The lipid profiles, of trap materials reflect changes in the surface water productivity and circulation patterns, and will form the basis of her senior thesis.

Three SES alums from class of 2011 worked at Toolik Lake on the North Slope of Alaska on diverse research projects.

Fiona Jevon (Harvard University) —Climate change in the Arctic.

Fiona’s internship was funded by Arctic LTER and NSF-Office of Polar Programs International Tundra Experiment spearheaded by SES faculty member, Dr. Gus Shaver. Fiona helped manage and sample long term experimental plots that were warmed by greenhouses and fertilized to simulate climate change. She also studied how the changes in shrub canopy structure caused by these manipulations affected light penetration, whole-canopy photosynthesis, and energy balance. The shrub study group was led by another SES alum, Laura van der Pol (Wellesley College and SES ’06).

Hansen Johnson (Bates College) — Effects of wildfire on tundra carbon and surface energy balance and changes in permafrost depth. Hansen

studied recent and older wildfires in different stages of recovery, making trips to the recent Anatuvik River fire site and also to older burns near Atqasuk and Barrow as part of the. "Fire in Northern Alaska: Effect of a Changing Disturbance Regime on a Regional Macrosystem" grant led by SES faculty member Dr. Gus Shaver.

Andrew Miano (Connecticut College) — Changing hydrology alters fish migration in the Arctic. Links between rivers and lakes in the Arctic may be changing due to shifting climate

and its effects on river flow. To help evaluate this, Andrew helped set up passively integrated transponder (PIT) tag antennas that detect fish implanted with PIT tags as they swim past, conducted angling surveys, and analyzed nutrient and sediment samples from Kuparik River. He will analyze this data on fish migration for his senior honors thesis contrasting Arctic Grayling and Lake Trout populations at Connecticut College. He commented that “this experience confirmed that fisheries ecology is the field in which I want to work. My amazing experience at LTER was a direct result of my time spent at the MBL’s Semester in Environmental Science program.” Andrew was mentored by SES faculty member and Ecosystems Center Senior Scientist, Dr. Linda Deegan. The project was funded jointly by the NSF “Fishscape” project lead by Deegan and by a summer

research grant from Connecticut College.

Collin Knauss (Colorado College) — Innovative strategies for cleaning up nitrate contaminated groundwater. Collin expanded on research he initiated during SES exploring

the denitrification potential and genomics of microbial community of the Waquoit Bay Permeable Reactive Barrier (PRB). The PRB was placed at the shore in 2005 to intercept and treat nitrate (NO3) contaminated groundwater. It consists of a subsurface trench filled with wood chips that provide a carbon source, which slowly decomposes consuming oxygen in the groundwater and stimulating the anaerobic process of denitrification. This converts NO3, a nutrient responsible causing algal blooms in estuaries, to unreactive atmospheric nitrogen (N2). He was awarded a Coastal Research in Environmental Science and Technology (CREST) fellowship by University of Massachusetts, Boston to work with Dr. Jen Bowen at U. Massachusetts Boston and SES Director, Dr. Ken Foreman, at MBL. Collin remarked “This was an exceptional experience.… I gained even more insight into this amazing experimental system.“ Collin has continued to work on the barrier data for his senior thesis and will present his research at the annual American Society of Limnology & Oceanography meetings in February, 2012.

Sarah Nalvan (Colby College) — Ecology of hydrothermal vent microbes. Sarah was awarded the “Arthur Vining Davis Foundation

Special Internship in Ecological Genomics” by the MBL- SES Program. Returning to the MBL for the summer, she remarked “When I finished SES in December, I felt like I was leaving Woods Hole with some unfinished business. SES gave me a taste of what science was like outside the classroom, but I was still hungry for more. So when a chance to land a internship at the MBL presented itself, I jumped.” She continued to work under the supervision of Dr. Julie Huber, her SES project advisor, but shifted focus from genomics of bacteria in nearby Siders Pond to investigating communication within bacterial communities of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. “The idea that all bacteria signal to each other is relatively new to microbiology and has never been studied in hydrothermal vents, systems where signaling is crucial to the communal lifestyle many vent bacteria sustain.” To study this communication, Sarah refined a procedure to detect certain signaling molecules. “I took away much more from my project than

the data. I learned scientific concepts and laboratory techniques that I will be able to apply wherever I go, and I gained a deeper under-standing of what it means to work as a scientist: to be a detective and storyteller, to exercise patience, and to embrace the reality that there will always be more questions than answers. My internship allowed me to build on the exposure I had to laboratory science during SES, and it plunged me into a world of engaged people and stimulating opportunities that furthered my development as a scientist.”

Jehane Samaha & Elisableth Ward (Brown University) — Urban landscapes and land-use change. Jehane and Elisabeth teamed up to continue a collaboration they began

during their SES project research, working on impacts of suburbanization on Cape Cod. They focused on the Plum Island Estuary (PIE) watershed, funded by an NSF Collaborative Research Award to SES faculty member, Chris Neill on the "Ecological Homogenization of Urban America" and by the PIE LTER. Jehane remarked that this allowed her to “delve further into the ideas that I began to explore in my SES final project on Suburban Ecology.” The team asked the question, “are humans creating a new ecologically uniform component of our patchwork landscape” as they transform natural forest and grassland habitats into residential subdivisions? The students lived at the PIE-LTER field station, collecting data on plant diversity in residential yards and conducting interviews with home owners on their landscaping and maintenance practices.

Elisabeth noted that “This research is part of a larger project that involves five other cities across the country: Baltimore, Phoenix, Miami, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles.” She has continued to workup the data collected for her senior thesis in biology at Brown. “It is easy for me to say that this research has been the most valuable academic experience I have had in my life thus far. SES not only connected me with scientists studying cutting-edge topics in my field of interest, but also taught me critical skills for collecting reliable data and organizing a large-scale project.”

Shirlie (Xiao) Yang (Grinnell College) – Greenhouse gas emissions from salt marshes.

Salt marshes are some of the most biogeochemically complex and active environments on Earth. Nutrient and element cycles in marsh sediments release carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane, all potent greenhouse gases. Marshes also sequester carbon in biomass, especially if they are accreting peat, as many northern marshes do. Shirlie Yang sought to evaluate whether, on balance, marshes in Waquoit Bay are net sources or sinks for greenhouse gases. Building on her experience measuring soil CO2 fluxes during the SES project period, she used a sophisticated and highly sensitive laser based detection system under guidance of Dr. Jim Tang, to study net fluxes of greenhouse gas from marshes in the Waquoit Bay watershed during her summer internship. This work was funded in part by the NOAA, National Estuarine Research Reserve System Science program.

Check out Stefanie Strebel’s (SES ’08) blog from Antarctica:

https://steffaninchen.jux.com/ Stefanie, a 2010 graduate of Franklin & Marshall College is the fourth

SES alum to intern with Dr. Hugh Ducklow’s Palmer Station LTER

Hansen Johnson, Fiona Jevon and Andrew Miano hiking in the Brooks Range of Alaska during a break from their research.