Congratulations to Mary Lofton, who received the Leo Bourassa Award from the Virginia Lakes and Watershed Association for her research on the effects of water quality management on phytoplankton blooms in Virginia reservoirs! This award was chosen based on her contributions to the field of water resources in the commonwealth of Virginia and goes to the top graduate student doing water research in VA!
Mary Lofton
On top of this honor, Mary also received the $5000 grant from the Virginia Water Resources Research Center to support her research project: “Simulating storms to predict phytoplankton community responses to future climate change: a whole-ecosystem mixing experiment”.
Mary has been monitoring the water quality of several reservoirs in southwestern VA during the past year and is studying the effects of global change, especially storms, on phytoplankton ecology. Mary is an IGC Fellow and works in close collaboration with the Western Virginia Water Authority in Roanoke. The data Mary collects from these reservoirs are used to help inform management decisions for the drinking water of Roanoke.
“This study highlights the importance of studying both land use and climate change simultaneously when predicting future water quality: these two stressors will interact, potentially synergistically, to increase phytoplankton blooms that threaten human health and freshwater ecosystem services. One other take-home message that is important to keep in mind is that there will be large geographic variation in lake and reservoir water quality responses to altered climate and land use.”
Our research team in the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech is leading a new project supported by the National Science Foundation that examines how best to prepare local drinking water reservoirs in southwestern Virginia for these challenges.”
Researchers anticipate harmful nitrogen outputs to increase as a result of precipitation changes.
If climate change continues to progress, increased precipitation could mean detrimental outcomes for water quality in the United States, a major new study warns.
An intensifying water cycle can substantially overload waterways with excess nitrogen runoff—which could near 20 percent by 2100—and increase the likelihood of events that severely impair water quality, according to a new study published by Science.
When rainfall washes nitrogen and phosphorus from human activities like agriculture and fossil fuel combustion into rivers and lakes, those waterways are overloaded with nutrients, and a phenomenon called “eutrophication” occurs.
This can be dangerous for both people and animals. Toxic algal blooms can develop, as well as harmful low-oxygen dead zones known as hypoxia, which can cause negative impacts on human health, aquatic ecosystems, and the economy. Notable dead zones include those in the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay, and around Florida.
In the new study, researchers predict how climate change might increase eutrophication and threats to water resources by using projections from 21 different climate models, each of which was run for three climate scenarios and two different time periods (near future, 2031-2060, and far-future, 2071-2100).
Previous models have consistently estimated that nitrogen loading will increase under all three scenarios and for both time periods. But under a far-future “business-as-usual” scenario, meaning a situation in which current warming rates continue into the future, the projected increase in nitrogen loading within the continental United States is highest.
Under these conditions, the study states that changes in the climate would alter precipitation patterns in the U.S. and increase nutrient pollution by one-fifth by the end of the century, with the strongest impacts occurring in the Corn Belt and in the Northeast.
Although some argue that the business-as-usual isn’t likely, Anna Michalak, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science and co-author of the study, says it’s not as unrealistic as it might seem.
“If we look at the trajectory we’re currently on, it looks very much like the business-as-usual scenario,” Michalak says. “I would love for that to be unrealistic and for that pathway to be wrong, but it’s not unrealistic to think that unless we start getting much more serious about mitigating and managing climate change, this is the path we are essentially on.”
By increasing efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and slow down the progression of climate change, these situations could avoided, however.
CLEANING UP THE MESS?
An increase in precipitation is an expected outcome of climate change, and other scientists have recently reported that a warming atmosphere will hold more water and produce much heavier rains over the course of the century.
“Future climate projections are showing an overall drying of the U.S. Southwest and a wetting in the rest of the country, with some seasonal differences,” says Andreas Prein, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
More rainfall from extreme events is expected in the future climate, Prein added, meaning that extreme precipitation is expected to increase, even in some regions that show a drying trend on average.
Still, preventing the resulting increases in excess nitrogen runoff is a major task. Researchers report that a one-third reduction in overall nitrogen input such as fertilizer use would be necessary, and management in the affected regions alone will not be enough.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency currently recommends reducing nitrogen input in the Mississippi Atchafalaya River Basin by 20 percent relative to 1980-1996 levels to mitigate the negative effects of nitrogen that flows into the Gulf of Mexico.
However, with the estimated changes in precipitation, a 62 percent reduction in nitrogen input would be required to achieve a similar objective.
This could be a problem for communities across the country in the future where it’s critical to start thinking about updating their infrastructure to deal with a future uptick in extreme storms.
“In developing water quality management strategies, we need to be accounting for the fact that precipitation is going to change and that water quality is not only a local issue,” Michalak says. “We need to take a step back and realize that what we see in our backyards in terms of water quality is human action locally, regionally, and globally.”
GLOBAL IMPACT
Although the researchers’ model is specific to the U.S., other heavily affected areas were also identified in the study, including India, China, and Southeast Asia. Because these regions are fast developing with continually growing populations, they have higher risk for large increases in nitrogen pollution due to increased precipitation.
Michalak said large population centers around the world are already displaying evidence of hypoxic dead zones and harmful algae blooms.
It’s a global issue, she said, and by using the new analysis of the U.S., researchers are opening a window to look at other parts of the world where high precipitation is expected to increase even more, and where nitrogen application is high.
“Water serves a lot of purposes, and even if you don’t live near the water, it does affect you, the things you eat and the way you live,” Michalak says. “It’s very, very crucial to understand that water sustainability is not just about having enough water, but it’s also about whether that water can be used by people and animals in safe, healthy ways.”
Many farmers, ranchers, and landowners rely on voluntary conservation incentive programs within the Farm Bill to make improvements to their land and operations that benefit them, the environment, and society.
According to a recent study by researchers from Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment and Point Blue Conservation Science published in the scientific journal Conservation Letters, it is necessary to find ways to sustain the benefits from these practices after the incentive program ends. This finding is crucial as Congress discusses the reauthorization of the Farm Bill.
In the United States, federal incentive programs aimed at promoting private land conservation fall under the umbrella of the Farm Bill, a package of legislation that promotes conservation efforts on farms and private lands, among other purposes. Typically taking the form of cash payments, tax credits, or cost-share agreements, these incentive programs allow landowners to participate in conservation activities while maintaining ownership of their land.
Persistence, a term introduced in this context by the authors of the study, is the continuation of a conservation practice after incentives from voluntary conservation programs end.
Dr. Ashley Dayer
According to lead author Ashley Dayer, assistant professor of human dimensions in Virginia Tech’s Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, some conservation practices like tree planting are more likely to continue providing benefits without active management by landowners, while other practices, such as conservation crop rotation, would require a more hands-on approach by landowners. In the latter cases, supporting landowners’ behavioral persistence is essential to maintaining environmental benefits.
Dayer worked with Seth Lutter, a master’s student in fish and wildlife conservation, and Kristin Sesser, Catherine Hickey, and Thomas Gardali from Point Blue Conservation Science, a California-based wildlife conservation and research nonprofit, to examine the existing research literature on landowner behavior after incentive programs ended to determine what factors contributed to landowners continuing conservation efforts on their own.
“We often hear assumptions about how landowners gain a stewardship ethic due to involvement in these programs that may lead them to continue conservation activities after the programs end, but there’s been very little empirical research to support this assumption,” explained Dayer, who is affiliated with the Global Change Center, housed in Virginia Tech’s Fralin Life Science Institute.
According to Gardali, director of the Pacific Coast and Central Valley Group at Point Blue Conservation Science, understanding and promoting persistence is vital to successful conservation efforts.
“Our efforts to provide habitat for water birds in California, in partnership with conservation organizations and rice growers, illustrate the need to have better information on if, when, and why landowners continue to implement a conservation action after the payments end,” Gardali said.
“We recently watched as rice growers who implemented conservation projects were unable to re-enroll for incentives due to program limitations,” he continued. “Bird habitat provision became uncertain and dependent on landowner behavior persistence.”
In this study, supported by the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the authors developed five research-based explanations for whether or not persistence outcomes could be expected. The pathways include landowners’ attitudes toward the conservation practices, landowners’ motivations for participating in incentive programs, habit formation, access to resources, and social influences.
The researchers offer several suggestions for improving conservation program outcomes, including:
Removing limits on the number of re-enrollments allowed for individual landowners if there are a limited number of landowners interested in the program;
Removing limits on the number of re-enrollments for programs where landowners must continually apply a practice for conservation outcomes;
Prioritizing projects where landowners enroll for the long term; and
Considering the likelihood of persistence when designing programs.
Additionally, Lutter notes, “More research is needed in this social science side of landowner conservation incentive programs. American taxpayers are investing billions in these programs, so it’s essential to understand how to promote the programs’ long-term effectiveness.”
Ultimately, incentive programs that assist landowners with conservation efforts benefit the population as a whole.
“Private lands conservation is critical,” Dayer said. “Often when we think about land for wildlife, we think about national parks or protected areas, but those are a small proportion. In the U.S., 60 percent of the land is privately owned.”
“A disproportionately high amount of wildlife is found on private lands, so having landowners engaged in managing their land is critical to having benefits like wildlife habitat or water quality that all of us enjoy beyond the boundaries of that landowner’s property. It’s beneficial to everyone when landowners are willing to do this work,” she concluded.
When Elaine Metz and Shannen Kelly started research at Virginia Tech in May, they already had an interest in improving the environment. But what they didn’t know was that they would soon be in the throes of fieldwork, complete with early mornings, heat, sweat, dirt, bug spray, and an ongoing threat of poison ivy.
Metz, of Salem, Virginia, and Kelly, of Tolland, Connecticut, both undergraduates at Hollins University, are spending the summer with Virginia Tech graduate students Rachel Brooks and Becky Fletcher as part of a new partnership with the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech. The goal of the partnership, which began this summer, is to provide Hollins undergraduates with research and mentoring experience in Virginia Tech labs that plan to recruit graduate students in coming years. This summer, the students are part of the Fralin Life Science Institute’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program.
As part of their research, Elaine Metz and Rachel Brooks check on tree canopies.
On a recent 90-degree day, Metz was carrying a machete and a backpack full of notebooks, markers, paper towels, water, and lunch through a grassy clearing in the forest at the Shenandoah Valley Agricultural Research and Extension Center located northeast of Blacksburg.
Following behind her was Brooks, of Mont Vernon, New Hampsire, a Ph.D. student in plant pathology, physiology, and weed science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, who studies the tree-of-heaven, scientifically known as Ailanthus altissima. The duo was headed to inspect the health of the second of four plots of Ailanthus, identifiable by their red and orange seeds and bark that looks like cantaloupe skin. This species is invasive to the U.S., originally hailing from China in the mid to late 1700s, and poses a threat to biodiversity and plant health throughout North America.
Two months before, Brooks had injected a sample of trees across these four different stands with a naturally occurring native fungus in an effort to understand how the fungus kills the trees and spreads and how climate variability affects the relationship between the two.
Once at the stand, Brooks and Metz were in synchrony. Metz took out the notebook with the map that Brooks had made, identifying each of the 200-300 trees that needed to be checked. Brooks then proceeded to each tree after Metz had called its number, yelling back observations: “healthy, full canopy” or “leaf drop, epicormic growth at 3 feet” or, simply, “dead!”
“Since I began this internship, we have been going out to field sites with inoculated (infected) trees, hoping to see death and disease. On the first day that I went out with Rachel, I didn’t know what to expect,” said Metz, a rising junior majoring in biology. “Rachel had told me that the trees would probably not be showing symptoms, as it was only two weeks after the original inoculation. When we arrived at the very first site, we saw wilt and chlorosis, both indications that it was working. It was great to experience how excited Rachel was. Her enthusiasm made me even more excited to participate in the research.”
After the health checks, the two carve out a chunk of the dead trunks to take back to the lab for testing, and count the inner rings for an age estimate. This is where the machete comes in.
“This is the best part of fieldwork,” said Metz, excitedly maneuvering under branches to grab plastic bags from the backpack and, of course, the machete.
Back on campus, Metz has been working to replicate these same health trends in the university’s greenhouse, where she has injected Ailanthussaplings with each of the same four conditions: fungus; another, less destructive form of the same fungus; both fungi together; and water as the control. Several days per week she joins Brooks at five additional fields sites, including White Oak Mountain Wildlife Management Area, Sailor’s Creek Battlefield State Park, Powhatan State Park, Radford Army Ammunition Plant, and Little North Mountain Wildlife Management Area, as well as at other locations to scout out trees and new testing measures.
“Besides being an enthusiastic person that stays positive even when faced with 14-hour poison ivy- and tick-infested Saturdays (which is the most you can hope from anyone), she is very efficient, organized, and asks good questions that help me think about our research from different angles,” said Brooks, who is also a fellow in the Interfaces of Global Change (IGC) graduate education program. “This collaboration has led to starting a few small pilot studies that may lead to larger projects in future years.”
On another humid day two weeks before, the other Virginia Tech-Hollins team, Kelly and Fletcher, were squatting down in a dirt plot at Kentland Farm observing Johnson grass, an invasive weed that wreaks havoc on natural areas and roadsides and invades the terrain of certain crops by growing in thick matts. Fletcher, of Kansas City, Missouri, a Ph.D. student in weed science and also an IGC Fellow, studies the physiology of Johnson grass to better understand genetic differences in plants from different climates around the country.
Shannen Kelly (right), of Hollins University, and Becky Fletcher measure Johnson grass, an invasive weed, at Kentland Farm in Blacksburg.
After deciding who was going to record and measure, they made their way around a 100 x 200-foot plot of two-month-old wiry stalks about two feet high, grown from New Mexico, Texas, Georgia, Virginia, and New York. The plant grows so well in moist climates like Southwest Virginia, Texas, and Georgia that by the end of August they could be up to seven feet tall, said Fletcher.
Fletcher knelt down around the plot to measure the new growth. Following right along recording the measurements was Kelly.
“Working with Becky has been wonderful,” said Kelly, a rising junior majoring in environmental science and Spanish. “She has taught me to remain persistent and patient not just through experiments, but afterwards when analyzing data. Sometimes results are messy, and it’s difficult to wade through them to create meaningful conclusions, but she has taught me that you can’t give up.”
Like Metz, Kelly works to replicate what she and Fletcher are finding in the field by studying the original plants from the different states in the greenhouse. In particular, she uses a unique tool, the LI-COR LI6400XT, a boxy silver-and-black machine that clamps down on a leaf like a stapler on paper – minus the staple. It’s designed to measure how successfully a plant responds to light and stores carbon through photosynthesis, the process plants undergo to make and store food. Genetic differences in how different populations of Johnson grass make and store food can shed insight into how the plant is affected by climate variability.
“Shannen is getting to see many different, realistic aspects of research, and I think it is important when you are just starting out in science to get well-rounded experiences,” Fletcher said. “She has grabbed this experience by the horns and has embraced amazingly well the good, the bad, the boring, the ugly, the dirty, and the heat and humidity when we are out in the field.”
In addition to their 10-week long research summer research projects, the Hollins University students also have participated in professional development opportunities, including personal statement writing, ethics of data usage, and presenting research, as well as lab and research facility tours, organized by the Office of Undergraduate Research, as part of the Fralin SURF program.
Metz and Kelly will present the results of their work with other students from various organized summer programs around campus at the 2017 Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium on July 27 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Goodwin Hall, located at 635 Prices Fork Road. Presentations will be in poster format. Metz has been selected as the exemplary student to give an oral presentation representing the Fralin SURF program. The community is welcome to attend.
The Office of Undergraduate Research organizes the summer symposium with support from the Fralin Life Science Institute, the Office of the Vice President for Research, and the Office for Undergraduate Academic Affairs.
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Story by Cassandra Hockman, Communications Correspondent, Fralin Life Science Institute
The Pentagon’s handling of munitions and their waste has poisoned millions of acres, and left Americans to guess at the threat to their health.
Shortly after dawn most weekdays, a warning siren rips across the flat, swift water of the New River running alongside the Radford Army Ammunition Plant. Red lights warning away boaters and fishermen flash from the plant, the nation’s largest supplier of propellant for artillery and the source of explosives for almost every American bullet fired overseas.
Along the southern Virginia riverbank, piles of discarded contents from bullets, chemical makings from bombs, and raw explosives — all used or left over from the manufacture and testing of weapons ingredients at Radford — are doused with fuel and lit on fire, igniting infernos that can be seen more than a half a mile away. The burning waste is rich in lead, mercury, chromium and compounds like nitroglycerin and perchlorate, all known health hazards. The residue from the burning piles rises in a spindle of hazardous smoke, twists into the wind and, depending on the weather, sweeps toward the tens of thousands of residents in the surrounding towns.
Nearby, Belview Elementary School has been ranked by researchers as facing some of the most dangerous air-quality hazards in the country. The rate of thyroid diseases in three of the surrounding counties is among the highest in the state, provoking town residents to worry that emissions from the Radford plant could be to blame. Government authorities have never studied whether Radford’s air pollution could be making people sick, but some of their hypothetical models estimate that the local population faces health risks exponentially greater than people in the rest of the region.
More than three decades ago, Congress banned American industries and localities from disposing of hazardous waste in these sorts of “open burns,” concluding that such uncontrolled processes created potentially unacceptable health and environmental hazards. Companies that had openly burned waste for generations were required to install incinerators with smokestacks and filters and to adhere to strict limits on what was released into the air. Lawmakers granted the Pentagon and its contractors a temporary reprieve from those rules to give engineers time to address the unique aspects of destroying explosive military waste.
That exemption has remained in place ever since, even as other Western countries have figured out how to destroy aging armaments without toxic emissions. While American officials are mired in a bitter debate about how much pollution from open burns is safe, those countries have pioneered new approaches. Germany, for example, destroyed hundreds of millions of pounds of aging weapons from the Cold War without relying on open burns to do it.
In the United States, outdoor burning and detonation is still the military’s leading method for dealing with munitions and the associated hazardous waste. It has remained so despite a U.S. Senate resolution a quarter of a century ago that ordered the Department of Defense to halt the practice “as soon as possible.” It has continued in the face of a growing consensus among Pentagon officials and scientists that similar burn pits at U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan sickened soldiers.
Federal records identify nearly 200 sites that have been or are still being used to open-burn hazardous explosives across the country. Some blow up aging stockpile bombs in open fields. Others burn bullets, weapons parts and — in the case of Radford — raw explosives in bonfire-like piles. The facilities operate under special government permits that are supposed to keep the process safe, limiting the release of toxins to levels well below what the government thinks can make people sick. Yet officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, which governs the process under federal law, acknowledge that the permits provide scant protection.
Consider Radford’s permit, which expired nearly two years ago. Even before then, government records show, the plant repeatedly violated the terms of its open burn allowance and its other environmental permits. In a typical year, the plant can spew many thousands of pounds of heavy metals and carcinogens — legally — into the atmosphere. But Radford has, at times, sent even more pollution into the air than it is allowed. It has failed to report some of its pollution to federal agencies, as required. And it has misled the public about the chemicals it burns. Yet every day the plant is allowed to ignite as much as 8,000 pounds of hazardous debris.
“It smells like plastic burning, but it’s so much more intense,” said Darlene Nester, describing the acrid odor from the burns when it reaches her at home, about a mile and a half away. Her granddaughter is in second grade at Belview. “You think about all the kids.”
Internal EPA records obtained by ProPublica show that the Radford plant is one of at least 51 active sites across the country where the Department of Defense or its contractors are today burning or detonating munitions or raw explosives in the open air, often in close proximity to schools, homes and water supplies. The documents — EPA PowerPoint presentations made to senior agency staff — describe something of a runaway national program, based on “a dirty technology” with “virtually no emissions controls.” According to officials at the agency, the military’s open burn program not only results in extensive contamination, but “staggering” cleanup costs that can reach more than half a billion dollars at a single site.
Pursuing graduate school in the sciences requires more than just passion – it also requires knowledge of the nuts and bolts of research, which usually comes through robust mentorship.
Developing strong mentor-mentee relationships is one of the main goals of a new partnership between the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech and Hollins University. The two universities recently signed a memorandum of understanding to offer Hollins undergraduate students summer research experience in Virginia Tech labs, which allows students to develop relationships with faculty who anticipate recruiting graduate students within the next couple of years.
Both schools recognize the need for undergraduates interested in graduate school to gain effective research training and for faculty to identify potential candidates for their teams.
“The partnership is unique because it has the dual goals of providing undergraduate research opportunities while simultaneously recruiting these same undergraduates to Virginia Tech for graduate school,” said William Hopkins, a professor of fish and wildlife conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment and director of the Global Change Center. “One of the most important factors leading to a student’s success in graduate school is an effective mentor-mentee relationship. This partnership allows both the mentee and mentor to assess whether they are a good match before fully committing to a longer-term professional endeavor.”
As part of the partnership, the universities will work together to identify potential pairings between Virginia Tech mentors and Hollins undergraduates based on the students’ research interests, monitor these relationships and research projects, and provide follow-up logistical support for graduate school recruitment as promising relationships are identified. Hollins University provides qualified students with a summer stipend and housing, and Virginia Tech provides research resources and infrastructure, including lab space, equipment, and supplies.
The program takes place over the summer, during which Hollins students will participate in a research project as part of the Fralin Life Science Institute’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Program, a 10-week training program designed to give motivated Virginia Tech undergraduates the opportunity to engage in full-time research. As part of the fellowship, students also participate in university-wide professional development activities organized by Virginia Tech’s Office of Undergraduate Research.
This new model is being piloted this summer, with the goal of scaling-up to include more students and faculty in future years.
“Working with Virginia Tech in this way allows for extraordinary research and mentoring opportunities for our students in a broad range of interdisciplinary fields,” said Trish Hammer, vice president of academic affairs at Hollins University. “We expect the partnership will grow in the coming years and certainly strengthen both the undergraduate program at Hollins and the graduate programs at Virginia Tech.”
Shannen Kelly, of Tolland, Connecticut, and Elaine Metz, of Staunton, Virginia, both rising juniors at Hollins University, are the first two students participating in the program this summer.
Elaine Metz and Shannen Kelly are rising juniors at Hollins University
Kelly, an environmental science and Spanish major, is currently working in the Invasive Plant Ecology Lab with Jacob Barney, an associate professor of plant pathology, physiology, and weed science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and graduate student mentor, Becky Fletcher, of Kansas City, Missouri, a doctoral student in the same department and an Interfaces of Global Change Fellow. Together the team is investigating the diversity and adaptability of Johnson grass, an invasive species, by measuring photosynthetic differences between populations.
“This partnership is a very meaningful opportunity for young scientists to be engaged with research early on,” said Kelly. “The chance to do graduate-level research, be surrounded by graduate students also doing research, and having the mentorship of a graduate professor is one of the most immersive and representative experiences of what graduate school is actually like. It has allowed me to test the waters, gain independence and confidence in my research abilities, and demonstrate that graduate school is the correct path for me.”
In 2018, Kelly will spend a semester in Spain, as she aspires to attend graduate school and work internationally.
Metz, a biology major, is spending her summer in the Forest Entomology Lab with Scott Salom, a professor of entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and mentor Rachel Brooks, of Mont Vernon, New Hampshire, a doctoral student in plant pathology, physiology, and weed science in the same college and an Interfaces of Global Change Fellow. As a team, they are testing species of native fungi as possible biological control agents for the invasive tree-of-heaven species, Ailanthus altissima.
“There is only so much I can learn in a classroom when professors emphasize experiential learning,” said Metz. “Being able to participate in this project has helped me to understand the process and the day-to-day of research. I have always had a vague idea that I wanted to pursue a career in research but was unsure what it might entail. Now I have a better grasp on how my post-undergraduate life could be.”
Story written by: Cassandra Hockman, Communications Correspondent, Fralin Life Science Institute
Header photo: From left: Keri Swaby, coordinator in the Office of Undergraduate Research; Janet Webster, an associate director at the Fralin Life Science Institute; Nancy Gray, recently retired president of Hollins University; Bill Hopkins, professor and director of the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech; Trish Hammer, vice president of academic affairs at Hollins University; and John McDowell, professor and associate scientific director at the Fralin Life Science Institute.
Local farmers and gardeners who want to attract native pollinators to their plants may be interested in the summer research project of Laura Stange, a rising senior majoring in horticulture in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Funded by the Fralin Life Science Institute’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Stange observes and analyzes the behavior patterns of pollinators around plots of native wildflowers at Kentland Farm in Blacksburg, Virginia. Her goal is to determine which pollinator species prefer which types of flowers.
Honeybees, wild bees, bumblebees, wasps, beetles, butterflies, moths, and syrphid flies are regulars to the 40 flower plots, which include a mix of annual and perennial native species, with household favorites like black-eyed Susan, purple cone flower, and beebalm.
A native bee visits a black-eyed susan at Kentland Farm in Blacksburg, VA
So far, Stange has recorded several “matches” between pollinator and flower. Wild bees and wasps tend to prefer the black-eyed Susans, she said. Meanwhile, the European honeybees don’t seem interested in any of the native Virginia wildflowers, deciding instead to hover around clover.
Understanding these preferences is key to conserving pollinators, many of which are experiencing population declines. Approximately 75 percent of the world’s food crops depend at least partly on pollination, amounting to a $235 -$577 billion annual value in the United States, according to an assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Meanwhile, beekeepers in Virginia reported a 41 percent loss of their hives in the last completed survey for 2015-2016 administered by the Bee Informed Partnership.
Laura Stange collects data at the wildflower research plots at Kentland Farm
“With pollinator population decline on the rise, it is becoming exceedingly important to support our native pollinators,” said Stange. “One way to help conserve these helpful communities is to plant more native flowers that provide nectar and pollen for bees.”
Stange’s advisor on the project is Megan O’Rourke, an assistant professor of horticulture in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and affiliate of the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech. O’Rourke is trying to figure out which species of wildflowers are easy to grow and provide the best bang for the buck for bee conservation. She’s working with farmers and policy makers to make conserving native pollinators easier and envisions “a day when native wildflowers will be a common site on farms and in home gardens,” she said.
Stange will present her findings along with other students from various summer research programs around campus at the 2017 Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium on July 27 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Goodwin Hall, located at 635 Prices Fork Road. The community is welcome to attend.
The Office of Undergraduate Research organizes the summer symposium with support from the Fralin Life Science Institute, the Office of the Vice President for Research, and the Office for Undergraduate Academic Affairs.
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Story by Lindsay Key, Communications Director, Fralin Life Science Institute
Sterling Nesbitt of Virginia Tech’s Department of Geosciences is being honored by the Geological Society of America with its Young Scientist Award, the 2017 Donath Medal.
Nesbitt, an assistant professor of geosciences in the College of Science and a faculty member with the Global Change Center, will receive the award at the Geological Society of America’s (GSA) annual conference in Seattle in October. The Young Scientist Award was established in 1988 to honor scientists aged 35 or younger who have greatly contributed to geologic knowledge with original research that advances the earth sciences, according to the GSA.
The award, consisting of a gold medal called the Donath Medal and an honorarium, was endowed by Dr. and Mrs. Fred A. Donath. Fred Donath was a famed professor of geophysics and earth science.
Shuhai Xiao, also a professor in the Department of Geosciences specializing in geobiology, nominated Nesbitt for the award.
“This is a highly deserved recognition for Sterling,” Xiao said, adding the award is a first for the Department of Geosciences.
Nesbitt earned a bachelor of arts in integrative biology from the University of California at Berkeley in 2004 and a doctoral degree in geosciences from Columbia University in 2009. His research focuses on the evolution of Mesozoic terrestrial vertebrate fossils through major Earth events, such as climate change, and extinction events, with a keen interest in reptile evolution. His studies and field work have taken around the world to such locales as Zambia, Tanzania, Argentina, and the western United States.
His research with Michelle Stocker, also an assistant professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech, has made numerous international headlines, including finding the oldest relatives of dinosaurs and discovering that these relatives sported a long neck and tail, and instead of walking on two legs, walked on four crocodylian-like legs.
Rising Temperatures could bump you from your flight
Over three days in late June, American Airlines canceled 57 regional flights out of Phoenix due to extreme heat of 120 degrees Fahrenheit. More heat waves in the future could mean flights get canceled, delayed or have to lose some weight. That weight could be you.
In the aviation business, really hot days are called “weight restriction days,” because when it’s hot, fully loaded planes can’t get off the ground. There’s only three ways for a plane to lose weight: fuel, cargo, or passengers.
In a 2015 study, researchers at Columbia University predicted that by 2050 there could be four times as many weight restriction days at the most at-risk airports in the United States. On the hottest days and longest flights, that could potentially mean dozens of passengers and their luggage are left waiting in the terminal.
To take off, a plane has to reach a certain minimum speed. On hot days and at high elevations, that minimum speed increases. “High elevation and high temperature mean less molecules of air for the plane to push off of,” explained Radley Horton, a climate scientist at Columbia who was involved in the study.
Longer runways can help, allowing pilots to attain a faster speed.
But when it’s too hot for a plane to take off, airlines must choose between canceling the flight, waiting until it’s cooler, or cutting back on weight. That’s why long flights out of the Middle East and parts of Central and South America are routinely scheduled for late in the evening or overnight.
The Columbia researchers found the number of weight restriction days has already increased since 1980. Some airports in the U.S. have adopted measures to deal with extreme heat. In Washington, D.C., those protocols are routine. Most summer days already have weight restrictions — because of temperatures, and also because the airport has a relatively short runway.
Those challenges rarely result in cancellations, explained Billy Nolen of Airlines for America, the airline trade association.
“You can normally accommodate weight issues by adjusting fuel levels,” he said.
Larger planes are better equipped to deal with weight restrictions. A standard 737 jet carries over 20 tons of fuel — and most flights do not require a full tank, Nolen said.
“These calculations happen every day, they’re computerized,” he said.
Smaller, older aircraft used for regional flights have an added challenge. Those models don’t stand up to extreme heat as well — and so, like the flights out of Phoenix last month — are much more likely to be cancelled.
Smaller planes like those in use on most regional flights are typically only certified to about 120 degrees — while more powerful aircraft can function up until 130 degrees, according to American Airlines spokeswoman Michelle Mohr.
And that, researchers say, means a higher likelihood of cancellations on short hops.
“In the future, we’ll see more planes unable to take off,” said Paul Williams, professor of meteorology at the University of Reading.
