ASLO honors Erin Hotchkiss with the 2016 Raymond L. Lindeman Award
Dr. Erin Hotchkiss
Dr. Erin Hotchkiss, a faculty member in the Department of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech and a Global Change Center affiliate, recently received The Raymond L. Lindeman Award from the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO). This award honors a scientist of 35 years of age or less for an outstanding peer-reviewed, English-language paper in the aquatic sciences. ASLO awarded Dr. Hotchkiss with the 2016 Lindeman Award for her paper, “High rates of daytime respiration in three streams: Use of δ18OO2 and OO2 to model diel ecosystem metabolism.” The award was presented at the ASLO 2016 Summer Meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Hotchkiss’s 2014 Limnology and Oceanography paper, co-authored by R.O. Hall, Jr., made a significant contribution to the understanding of aquatic ecosystem metabolism and, in particular, the relative importance of daytime and nighttime respiration in freshwaters. Despite decades of exploration, many of the underlying assumptions in investigations of ecosystem metabolism have remained untested. Erin’s paper directly tested one such assumption: that respiration rates are constant over a 24-hour period. Hotchkiss took an innovative approach to challenge this assumption using oxygen isotopes to estimate diel variation in respiration. Her combined field and modeling study provides perhaps the strongest empirical evidence to date demonstrating major differences (2 to 4-fold) between daytime and nighttime oxygen cycling in aquatic environments.
“Metabolism is a core property of aquatic ecosystems but some key assumptions about measuring it had been untested prior to this paper. Erin’s sophisticated approach to understand the two-way movement of oxygen between water bodies and the atmosphere is critical to improving our understanding of ecosystem dynamics in streams,” stated Jim Elser, president of ASLO.
Citation:
Hotchkiss, E.R., and Hall, R.O., 2014, High rates of daytime respiration in three streams: Use of δ18OO2 and OO2 to model diel ecosystem metabolism. Limnol. Oceanogr. 59(3): 798-810.
In June 2016, Dr. Hotchkiss also received the Hynes Award for New Investigators from the Society of Freshwater Science. This honor is awarded to a benthic scientist who was a senior author of an outstanding primary publication in benthic science.
IGC Fellow, Angie Estrada was awarded the SENACYT-IFARHU Doctoral Fellowship 2016. She will receive three years of support to continue her graduate education in the Department of Biological Sciences under Dr. Lisa Belden’s supervision.
SENACYT (National Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation) is Panama’s government authority in charge of planning and implementing the national strategy of science and technology. It is the equivalent to the NSF in the United Sates. SENACYT supports outstanding Panamanian students who are pursuing undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate degrees in fields of science at internationally recognized institutions.
Angie Estrada at her research site in Panama
Angie’s dissertation focuses on seasonal variation of disease and skin bacterial communities in tropical lowland amphibians. Her main interest is advancing the application of scientific research into a holistic conservation research program for amphibians in Panama. Angie seeks to challenge the existing contrasts between basic and applied research in conservation in Latin America. She believes the effort will require an interdisciplinary approach, combining ecology, social sciences, policy, and science communication to address these pressing issues in the region.
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Panamanian Golden Frogs, Photograph by Brian Gratwickeon Flicker.
The Washington Semester program at Virginia Tech began offering undergraduate students the chance to spend summers learning the ins and outs of policymaking on Capitol Hill 20 years ago.
Today, the university’s School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), which houses the summer program, has partnered with the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech to ensure students are exposed to the role science plays in this process.
As part of the new collaboration, the Global Change Center has established an Undergraduate Science Policy Fellowship program for rising junior and senior science and engineering students who are specifically interested in the science-policy interface. Fellowship recipients attend the six-credit Washington Semester summer program, which includes hands-on work experience through a science policy internship. The application period for both programs is currently underway, and the deadline to apply is Dec. 10.
“The center’s undergraduate and graduate training programs are designed to broaden student’s perspectives of the importance of science to society and to train them to be more effective communicators of science to the general public and decision makers,” said Bill Hopkins, director of the Global Change Center and professor of fish and wildlife conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment.
“Our partnership with SPIA is enabling us to provide students with an immersive experience to see firsthand how science is used for decision making, and expose them to career opportunities where they can use their science training to better society,” said Hopkins, who is also a Fralin Life Science Institute affiliate.
Through the Washington Semester program, science policy fellows work for various organizations, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Agriculture, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Agency for International Development, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA.
This past summer, the first two fellows went to the National Capital Region as part of this partnership.
Lauren Buttling, of Potomac Falls, Virginia, a junior once majoring in biology but now in environmental policy and planning in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies, pursued the summer program because of her interests in public health and policy. She spent the summer working in the Policy and Regulatory Services Branch of the Office of Pesticides at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“While there, I was able to bring in my undergraduate research experience because I knew certain laboratory protocols,” said Buttling. “When we reviewed audits that dealt with the spread of Zika, for example, I could talk about how scientific research works because I work in a lab at Virginia Tech that studies surrogate (nonharmful) strains of Ebola. My co-workers were reviewing protocols for insecticide and pesticide use, but they mostly had backgrounds in political science, so they didn’t necessarily know what the lab processes looked like. I was able to provide that perspective.”
Austin Berrier, of Arcadia, North Carolina, a senior majoring in engineering science and mechanics in the College of Engineering, pursued the program with an interest in law and spent the summer in the technology sector of the EPA. While there, he developed detailed guidelines for delegated agencies to report industry compliance with the Clean Air Act.
“I saw that scientific knowledge informs political decisions, especially in executive agencies, as long as the science doesn’t get politicized,” said Berrier. “What Congress does when they pass legislation like the Clear Water Act, is give the U.S. EPA the responsibility to decide on amounts, such as how much of a toxin can be in water before it poses a risk to public health. So, I learned how science can work in a lot of risk analyses.”
As students concerned with environmental policy, both Berrier and Buttling found the summer experience enlightening in terms of how they understand more complicated issues, such as climate change.
“Our goal is for our undergraduate students to develop a connection and a sense of empathy with the world around them, so they are getting a cross-disciplinary experience,” said Anne Khademian, SPIA director and professor in the university’s Center for Public Administration and Policy in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies. “The beauty of this partnership is that some students have a science background, while other students have experience in policy analytics, so they bring this background to the table during the summer. These connections provide a more diverse skillset to understand the entire policy process and how decisions are made to advance the public’s interest.”
Based in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies, the Washington Semester program is an 11-week immersion program in Washington, D.C., designed for juniors and seniors from all academic majors who are interested in learning about and working on challenging public policy issues. Students enroll in either a six-credit or 12-credit program, which includes an internship within a public, private, or nonprofit organization that is based on students’ interests and professional goals.
A global deal to limit the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in the battle to combat climate change is a “monumental step forward”, John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has said.
The agreement, announced on Saturday morning after all-night negotiations in Kigali, Rwanda, caps and reduces the use of HFCs – a key contributor to greenhouse gases – in a gradual process beginning in 2019, with action by developed countries including the US, the world’s second worst polluter.
More than 100 developing countries, including China, the world’s top carbon dioxide emitter, will start taking action in 2024, sparking concern from some groups that the action would be implemented too slowly to make a difference. A small group of countries, including India, Pakistan and some Gulf states, also pushed for and secured a later start in 2028, saying their economies need more time to grow. That is three years earlier than India, the world’s third worst polluter, had first proposed.
Worldwide use of HFCs has soared in the past decade as rapidly growing countries like China and India have widely adopted air conditioning in homes, offices and cars. But HFC gases are thousands of times more destructive to the climate than carbon dioxide, and scientists say their growing use threatens to undermine the Paris accord by 195 countries, an agreement last year to reduce climate emissions.
President Barack Obama praised the deal on Saturday morning, calling the agreement “an ambitious and far reaching solution” to a “rapidly growing threat to the health of our planet”.
“In addition to today’s amendment, countries last week crossed the threshold for the Paris Agreement to enter into force and reached a deal to constrain international aviation emissions,” he said in a statement. “Together, these steps show that, while diplomacy is never easy, we can work together to leave our children a planet that is safer, more prosperous, more secure, and more free than the one that was left for us.”
Kerry said on Saturday: “It’s a monumental step forward that addresses the needs of individual nations but it will give us the opportunity to reduce the warming of the planet by an entire half a degree centigrade. Agreeing a deal to phase down the use of HFCs is the single most important step we can take to limit the warming of the planet. We all know that the window of time that we have to prevent the worst climate impacts from happening is in fact narrowing, and it is closing fast.”
Environmental groups had hoped the deal could reduce global warming by a half a degree celsius by the end of this century. This agreement gets about 90% of the way there, said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. Zaelke’s group said this would mean the “largest temperature reduction ever achieved by a single agreement”.
The new agreement is “equal to stopping the entire world’s fossil-fuel CO2emissions for more than two years,” said David Doniger, climate and clean air programme director with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Experts said they hoped market forces would help speed up the limits agreed to in the deal. “Compromises had to be made, but 85% of developing countries have committed to the early schedule starting 2024, which is a very significant achievement,” Clare Perry of the Environmental Investigation Agency said.
HFCs were introduced in the 1980s as a substitute for ozone-depleting gases but are now considered a uniquely dangerous threat to the climate. According to the Berkeley National Laboratory, about 1.6bn new air-conditioning units are expected to be switched on by 2050, with the potential of raising global temperatures significantly. Air conditioning is largest cause of HFC growth, but the gases are also used in fire suppressants, insulating foams, inhalers and data centre cooling systems.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) in conjunction with the Global Change Center (GCC) and the Institute for Society, Culture & Environment (ISCE) welcomes:
DR. BARRY RABE
Professor, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan
Thursday and Friday, October 27-28, 10:30 a.m. in Fralin Auditorium
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ABOUT
Barry Rabe is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Environmental Policy; J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Professor of Public Policy at the Ford School of Public Policy; Professor of the Environment, College of Literature, Science and the Arts; Professor of Environmental Policy, School of Natural Resources and the Environment; and Professor of Political Science, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan. He currently directs the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) and is a non-resident senior fellow in the Governance Studies Program of the Brookings Institution.
Barry’s research examines the intersection of environmental protection and energy development in federal systems, with special interest in the role of American states and Canadian provinces in policy development and implementation. Much of his work in recent years has examined sub-federal climate policy and public opinion on climate issues, including ongoing collaboration in the development of the National Surveys on Energy and the Environment (NSEE). He has also expanded research in the past few years to consider policy issues related to state and local development of shale gas resources and served on the 2013-14 National Research Council Committee on Risk Management and Governance Issues in Shale Gas Development.
Please join us for two lectures at 10:30 a.m. in Fralin Auditorium:
“The Politics of Carbon Pricing: Lessons from the Past Two Decades”- Thursday October 27th
“Shale Play Politics in the Era of Fracking”- Friday, October 28th
Refreshments will be served be served beginning at 10:00 a.m. prior to both presentations.
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On a recent Saturday in September, a group of IGC graduate students launched 3 “Bucket Boats” just above McCoy Falls on the New River. The Bucket Boats, which are an older style of raft that are not self draining (thus necessitating the use of a bucket to bail water out of the boat after a rapid), were outfitted by the Virginia Tech Whitewater Club.
The IGC crew spent the day floating downstream, through the series of slow-moving flat-water sections interspersed with the classic ledge rapids characteristic of this stretch of the New River. As the group moved downstream, students shared information about the surrounding environment. This ranged from discussions about water striders, insights about Paw Paw, thoughts on the geological formation of the landscape, and a rapid-fire list of fun facts of every organism the group could identify. Much fun was had by all, and the group left the trip with some new found friendships, fresh knowledge of the natural world, and an increased sense-of-place as citizens of the New River Watershed.
Thanks to Nicole Ward for contributing this story!
Iconic dinosaur shapes were present in animals for at least 100 million years before dinosaurs themselves actually appeared.
A study published in Thursday’s issue of Current Biology describes how a multi-institutional team of paleontologists, including Virginia Tech College of Science researcher Michelle Stocker, identified and named a new species of extinct reptile estimated to be 230 million years old – predating dinosaurs.
Michelle Stocker, a paleontologist at Virginia Tech, led a multi-institutional team that discovered a new species of reptile that predates dinosaurs.
Called Triopticus primus — meaning the “First of Three Eyes” because the large natural pit in the top of its head lends the appearance of an “extra” eye — Triopticus bears an extremely thickened skull roof, just like the very distantly related pachycephalosaur dinosaurs that lived more than 100 million years later. And even more unexpected, many of the other extinct animals found with Triopticus resemble later dinosaurs as well.
“Triopticus is an extraordinary example of evolutionary convergence between the relatives of dinosaurs and crocodylians and later dinosaurs that is much more common than anyone ever expected,” Stocker said. “What we thought were unique body shapes in many dinosaurs actually evolved millions of years before in the Triassic Period, about 225 million years ago.”
Convergence — where distantly related animals evolve to look very similar to each other — is a widely-recognized phenomenon in evolutionary biology. A classic example of this is a bird wing and a bat wing; both animals use their wings for flight, but the inner details of those wings are different and evolved independently.
Many of the other Triassic reptiles buried with Triopticus in the Otis Chalk fauna display structures that are easily recognized in later dinosaurs as well, such as the long snouts of Spinosaurus, the toothless beaks of ornithomimids, and the armor plates of ankylosaurs. Researchers said it is extremely rare to have so many diverse species in a single ancient community be converged upon over a broad swath of later geologic time.
“The Otis Chalk fauna is an amazing single snapshot of geologic time where you have this extraordinary range of animal body plans all present at the same time living together,” Stocker said. “Among the animals preserved in the Otis Chalk fauna, Triopticus exemplifies this phenomenon of body-shape convergence because its skull shape was repeated by very distantly related dome-headed dinosaurs more than 100 million years later.”
Dinosaurs, like these distant cousins from the Triassic Period, are all reptiles. Reptiles rapidly evolved in terms of numbers of species soon after the greatest mass extinction of all time on Earth, at the end of the Permian Period.
“After the enormous mass extinction 250 million years ago, reptiles exploded onto the scene and almost immediately diversified into many different sizes and shapes. These early body shapes were later mimicked by dinosaurs,” said Sterling Nesbitt, an assistant professor of paleontology at Virginia Tech and co-author of the study. The mimicry in body shape appears to evolve only after the extinction of the first group of reptiles.
Researchers said an important component of the study involved the use of CT technology, more commonly associated with patients, not fossils.
The specimen underwent a detailed CT scan at The University of Texas at Austin in order to reconstruct the brain anatomy, which had been rotted away millions of years ago when the animal was fossilized.
“This project combines both old-school and high-tech approaches,” said co-author Lawrence Witmer of Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. “Careful excavation and cleaning of the fossils showed the team that we had something special in Triopticus, but being able to peer inside the skull with X-ray CT scanning was a game-changer.”
Not only is the external skull shape of Triopticus eerily reminiscent of the dome-headed dinosaurs, the internal parts of its head followed suit.
“CT scanning showed us that the similarity of Triopticus with the much later dome-headed pachycephalosaur dinosaurs was more than skin deep, extending to the structure of the bone and even the brain.” Witmer said.
“With a combination of CT scans and fossil comparisons we were able to give this old fossil new life,” said Katharine Criswell, a co-author and doctoral student at the University of Chicago.
Complete details of what Triopticus primus looked like and how big it was are not yet known, though it was likely no bigger than an alligator. For now, researchers only have a fragment of skull. The remainder of the face and jaw, the vertebrae, and the rest of the skeleton is missing, either long lost to natural elements, waiting to be found in the field still, or inside a plaster jacket not yet opened at the lab at UT Austin.
Though many fossils are uncovered during long stints of dusty fieldwork in far-off places, the team’s discovery of this specimen — originally collected near Big Spring, Texas, by the Works Progress Administration in 1940 — happened in the Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collections in 2010, where it had been lying in plain sight for 70 years.
It is not uncommon for new species to be found in fossil ‘libraries’ around the world. The Works Progress Administration, part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s monumental effort to put Americans back to work at end the Great Depression, found so many fossils during its short span of work that they didn’t have time to clean all of them.
“We can gain new insights into the history of life because specimens like Triopticus have been curated into museum collections like the one at UT Austin,” said Matthew Brown, co-author and director of the Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collections at The University of Texas at Austin. “These collections are the foundation of natural history research, and this new animal illustrates how exciting discoveries are continually made thanks to the forethought and investment of past generations. It will be fascinating to see what the students of tomorrow find next.”
