Month: March 2019

Categories
Campus Seminar Announcements Other Sponsored Lectures Water

Federal Water Resources Agencies – Panel Discussion

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Thursday, April 4, 2019

3:30 pm
HABB1 room 108

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Hear about what it is like to work for various federal water resources agencies. Panel members will talk about their work, career path, and their agency. Afterward, there will be plenty of time for discussion/questions from the audience. Undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, and faculty with interest in freshwater science and/or working for the federal government are encouraged to attend. Refreshments will be served.

For more information, contact GCC Faculty: Jon Czuba, Biological Systems Engineering, jczuba@vt.edu.[/vc_cta][vc_column_text]

Panel members:

 

Rob Hilldale, Civil Engineer

Bureau of Reclamation, Technical Service Center, Sedimentation and River Hydraulics

Denver, Colorado

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Roger Kuhnle, Research Hydraulic Engineer

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, National Sedimentation Laboratory, Watershed Physical Processes

Oxford, Mississippi

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Jim Selegean, Hydraulic Engineer

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Great Lakes Hydraulics and Hydrology Office

Detroit, Michigan

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Molly Wood, National Sediment Specialist

U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Mission Area, Observing Systems Division

Boise, Idaho

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Tim Straub, Hydrologist

U.S. Geological Survey, Central Midwest Water Science Center & Chair

Federal Interagency Sedimentation Project

Urbana, Illinois

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Categories
Blog Interfaces of Global Change IGEP Science Communication Student Spotlight

IGC Professional Development Series: Alternative Careers | Susan Cook-Patton, The Nature Conservancy

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By Lauren Maynard  |  March 25, 2019

 

On March 8th, the IGC’s Professional Development Series: Alternative Careers hosted Susan Cook-Patton, PhD. I invited Dr. Cook-Patton to speak with the group because I was familiar with her nonlinear trajectory to her current position at The Nature Conservancy as a Forest Restoration Scientist. Interested in a broad range of topics, Dr. Cook-Patton graduated from Indiana University Bloomington with three undergraduate degrees: Biology, Psychology, and English. After graduation she worked as a naturalist and fell in love with ecology, ultimately earning a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. Before landing her dream job at The Nature Conservancy, she worked with AAAS, Smithsonian Institution, and US Forest Service.

Our group of 18 IGC fellows had plenty of questions, which filled the hour we had with Dr. Cook-Patton. As someone who has worked in academia, federal agencies, and NGOs, she gave us insights on the different workplace cultures of each. She spoke on the geographic and logistic challenges of relocating with a partner, as well as work-life balance. Dr. Cook-Patton provided tips for current graduate students on skills and experiences we should have to be competitive post-grad applicants, including both people skills and data manipulation. She addressed the worry of “over-educating” ourselves out of positions, but reassured us that our degrees will most likely make us more competitive rather than hinder us. Overall, the discussion left us with a positive outlook on life after graduate school!

[Session Flyer][/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”29123″ img_size=”full”][vc_separator style=”shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”28246″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]Lauren Maynard is an IGC fellow working with Dr. Susan Whitehead in the Department of Biological Sciences. She is interested in species interactions: how plants, animals, and humans intertwine to form intricate communities. She is currently studying the chemical ecology of seed dispersal and fruit defense, as well as the multi-trophic interactions among plants, insects, and bats.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Categories
Conservation Ideas New Publications Research

Researchers study people who feed birds in their backyards with implications for bird conservation

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From VT News

March 26, 2019

People in many parts of the world feed birds in their backyards, often due to a desire to help wildlife or to connect with nature. In the United States alone, over 57 million households in the feed backyard birds, spending more than $4 billion annually on bird food.

While researchers know that bird feeding can influence nature, they do not know how it influences the people who feed those birds.

Researchers Ashley Dayer and Dana Hawley of Virginia Tech set out to change all this by studying the observations and corresponding actions of those feeding birds. The study was conducted in collaboration with researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia, and their findings were recently published in People and Nature, a new journal published by the British Ecological Society.

“Given that so many people are so invested in attracting birds to their backyard, we were interested in what natural changes they observe at their feeders beyond simply more birds,” said Dayer, an assistant professor in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment at Virginia Tech. “In particular, we wanted to know how they respond to their observations. For example, how do they feel if they see sick birds at their feeders, and what actions do they take to address these observations?”

The researchers analyzed how people who feed birds notice and respond to natural events at their feeders by collaborating with Project FeederWatch, a program managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that engages more than 25,000 people to observe and collect data on their backyard birds.

Using a survey of 1,176 people who feed birds and record their observations of birds in the Project FeederWatch database, the researchers found that most people noticed natural changes in their backyards that could be due to feeding, including an increase in the number of birds at their feeders, a cat or hawk near their feeders, or a sick bird at their feeders.

“More and more, we see that humans are interacting less with nature and that more of our wildlife are being restricted to areas where there are humans around. Looking at how humans react to and manage wildlife in their own backyards is very important for the future of wildlife conservation and for understanding human well-being as the opportunities for people to interact with wildlife become more restricted to backyard settings,” said Hawley, an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science whose research program focuses on wildlife disease ecology and evolution.

Co-author David Bonter, director of citizen science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, echoed this same sentiment, citing his 17 years of experience in working with people who feed birds and learning about their observations. “This study provides important information about the breadth and pattern of these experiences through responses of over 1,000 participants. The findings will help us at Project Feederwatch improve how we work with bird watchers toward our shared goal of bird conservation.”

The people who feed birds also responded, particularly to cats at their feeders, by scaring off the cats, moving feeders, or providing shelter for birds. When observing sick birds, most people cleaned their feeders. When observing more birds, people often responded by providing more food.

Fewer people acted in response to seeing hawks; the most common response to this was providing shelter for the feeder birds. These human responses were, in some cases, tied to peoples’ emotions about their observations, particularly anger. While cats near feeders most commonly evoked anger, sick birds led to sadness or worry. Emotions in response to hawks were more varied.

“Feeding wild birds is a deceptively commonplace activity. Yet, it is one of the most intimate, private, and potentially profound forms of human interaction with nature. This perceptive study uncovers some of the remarkable depth associated with bird feeding and discerns that people who feed birds are alert to a wide range of additional natural phenomena,” said Darryl Jones, a professor at the Environmental Futures Research Institute and School of Environment and Sciences at Griffith University in Australia, who was not connected to the study.

 

One surprising result that the researchers found in this study was that when deciding how much to feed birds, people prioritized natural factors, such as cold weather, more than time and money. Most people believed that the effects of their feeding on wild birds was primarily good for birds, even though many observed and took action in response to natural events in their backyard that could impact the health of the birds and might partly result from their feeding.

“Overall, our results suggest that people who feed birds observe aspects of nature and respond in ways that may affect outcomes of feeding on wild birds. More work is needed to fully understand the positive and negative effects of feeding on wild birds and, thereby, the people who feed them,” said Dayer, whose research focuses on the human dimensions of wildlife conservation, applying social science to understand human behavior related to wildlife.

Dayer and Hawley are both affiliated faculty of the Global Change Center, which is housed within the Fralin Life Science Institute at Virginia Tech. This research was jointly funded by the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech and the Institute for Science, Culture, and Environment.

“This research effort is one of five projects resulting from our annual joint funding effort to promote collaborations between the social sciences/humanities and the biophysical sciences/engineering,” said William Hopkins, director of the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech and professor of fish and wildlife conservation. “It’s wonderful to watch new teams develop from these seed grants, and the collaboration between Drs. Dayer and Hawley is a great example of this initiative in action. It will be exciting to watch the research team’s success in years to come.”

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CONTACT:
Kristin Rose
(540) 231-6614

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Categories
Climate Change News Research

Program prepares farming communities in Nepal for impacts of a changing climate

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From VT News

March 22, 2019

A Virginia Tech program is analyzing how climate change in Nepal affects distribution of invasive species, livelihoods of smallholder farmers, and food and land availability.

People in Nepal, especially in rural communities, are dependent on natural resources, and a significant portion of the country’s economy relies on climate-sensitive industries, such as ecotourism. Rich biodiversity and a fluctuating topography also make Nepal a model for studying the effects of climate change on different types of land.

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Integrated Pest Management and its implementing team at Tribhuvan University in Nepal found that as Earth’s mean temperature slowly rises, Nepal’s Himalayan temperature is increasing at an even higher rate. Areas of the country at higher elevations are typically cold, but as they warm, the team’s research shows certain invasive weeds spread more rapidly.

Muni Muniappan, director of the Innovation Lab, said invasive species respond faster to climate change than native vegetation. Not only do invasive species wipe out vital native food and cash crops, but they also cause trillions of dollars in global damage every year.

The Virginia Tech-managed project funds 22 science and technology researchers in Nepal who are in the beginning stages of their careers. All students who have completed degrees through the program have acquired positions either in local universities or the government.

In addition to mapping the spread of invasive weeds, the project is analyzing climate change’s negative impact on future land availability. Buckwheat and finger millet, two highly nutritious cereal crops grown throughout Nepal, will both eventually be threatened, according to the team’s projections.

Availability of land for buckwheat is projected to shrink by up to 8.2 percent by 2050 and again by 8.3 percent by 2070, while finger millet land availability is projected to shrink by up to 6.9 percent and 7.6 percent by 2050 and 2070, respectively.

The project also tracks patterns of research to find gaps in knowledge about climate change and studies local communities’ perceptions of how climate change alters livelihoods.

“Our studies project major losses of land that will result in the reduction of grain yields and, ultimately, the reduction of food availability,” said Pramod K. Jha, professor emeritus at Tribhuvan University and head of the project in Nepal. “This will be a real detriment to smallholder farmers who already have limited resources to fall back on and will threaten the many local varieties of the crops that have helped sustain them for so long.” 

Developing countries disproportionately represent some of the more biodiverse regions in the world but are also often less capable of underwriting mitigation efforts as major threats loom. Nepal boasts 118 different ecosystems, and agriculture is the main source of income for two-thirds of its population.

The program’s students are compiling management methods that will be implemented in Nepal to help communities adapt to climate change. These include biological control — the use of natural enemies to combat pests.

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Integrated Pest Management is funded by the United States Agency for International Development and is housed at the Center for International Research, Education, and Development, part of Outreach and International Affairs.

Written by Sara Hendery

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CONTACT:
Andrea Brunais
540-231-4691

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Categories
Biodiversity New Publications Research

Researchers analyze biodiversity patterns in Antarctic Dry Valleys

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News

March 19, 2019

Cover image: McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica. Image Credit: McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER.

Antarctica is a nearly uninhabited, ice-covered continent ravaged by cold, windy, and dry conditions. Virginia Tech researcher and GCC faculty affiliate Jeb Barrett was part of an international collaborative team that analyzed biodiversity patterns in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica.

“Surprisingly, we found that biotic, or living, interactions are crucial in shaping biodiversity patterns even in the extreme ecosystems of the Antarctic Dry Valleys. Antarctic soils are model ecosystems, limited by the extreme climate and lack of vascular plants, and they host simple food webs with few species,” said Barrett, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science.

These findings were recently published in two separate papers in Communications Biology. A paper on biotic interactions analyzes the entire community of soil organisms; its companion paperfocuses on the soil nematode community using a modeling approach.

Characteristics of Antarctic communities, such as simple food webs and low species richness, allow for a greater understanding of the whole community, from bacteria to multicellular invertebrates.

This research is the product of an international collaboration of scientists from half a dozen countries: the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and South Africa. Organized by the University of Waikato and the New Zealand Antarctic Program, it is the first of its kind to study a soil community in its entirety at a regional scale.

Barrett has been conducting research in Antarctica for 20 years; he deployed for this research collaboration in 2009 and 2010. Research in the Barrett lab addresses the influences of soils, climate variability, hydrology, and biodiversity on biogeochemical cycling from the scale of microorganisms to regional landscapes.

“My research in the Antarctic has been focused on analyzing the physical and geochemical drivers that predict biodiversity patterns. I focused initially on the nematode communities, and my work has now expanded into the bacterial communities, as well,” said Barrett, an affiliated faculty member of the Global Change Center, housed within the Fralin Life Science Institute.

The Communications Biology paper on biotic interactions considers the entire community of soil organisms: cyanobacteria, heterotrophic bacteria, nematodes, and other microscopic invertebrates. The scientists studied the factors that determine the distribution and abundance of these organisms, as well as temperature, topography, distance to the coast, and soil properties, such as water and pH levels, in their analysis.

“What makes this paper truly unique is that we considered the entire community of soil organisms and all the possible biotic and abiotic interactions that potentially shape the species composition and diversity,” said Barrett. “We used the statistical technique of structural equation modeling to tease out what the drivers of these communities are.”

Biogeochemistry and climate have strong effects on biodiversity, but this new data demonstrated that there are two other important factors. They found that biogeography and species interactions are stronger drivers of biodiversity than originally expected. Biogeographic processes occur when an organism moves through space, interacting with its community as it moves. Species interactions, such as predator-prey relationships and competition, also influence biodiversity.

In the companion paper, the researchers used a modeling approach to study the co-occurrence and distribution of three dominant nematode species found in the soil. Nematodes, also known as roundworms, are a group of simple organisms that have successfully adapted to nearly every ecosystem on Earth. The researchers demonstrated that competition is a more important driver of diversity patterns in the nematode community than previously thought.

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Nematode species Plectus (left) and Scottnema (right) found in the Antarctic. Photos courtesy of Jeb Barrett.

“We modeled three nematode species – Plectus, Scottnema, and Eurdoylaimus – that are potentially interacting. Our results show that it is not just environmental drivers that influence species distribution across the polar landscape but that competition and interactions are playing a large role in diversity patterns as well,” said Barrett.

The future challenge for researchers is to understand how the effects of climate change on these interactions will alter species coexistence in Antarctica. They expect that with increasing temperatures, the thawing of ice will create environments that select for nematode species more adapted to warmer and wetter environments. Early indications of this have already been observed in the team’s long-term monitoring studies of soil communities, as reported in the journal Ecology last year.

Barrett’s ongoing research is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program. His research goal with the LTER is to use a combination of manipulative experiments and long-term observations to understand how climate variability influences Antarctic organisms and ecosystems.

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CONTACT:
Kristin Rose
(540) 231-6614

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Related Stories:

Jeb Barrett’s research shows that extreme melt restructured the invertebrate ecosystem in Antarctica

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Categories
News Pollution

What’s in your indoor air?

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From NPR Radio IQ

By Robbie Harris | March 19, 2019

Listen to the radio interview clip here!

For decades, indoor air pollution has actually exceeded outdoor pollution. And that’s because in a closed environment, synthetic materials in things like flooring and furniture, outgas, sending particles into the air. Some are harmful to health. Now, scientists at Virginia Tech are working to flag which ones are dangerous, so they can be replaced with safer materials.

Credit: Sciencedirect.com

And then once they’re in the air they sort of adsorb to other surfaces, so they adsorb to the wall or the desk or to the dust in your house.”

John Little is a civil and environmental engineer, who’s working to come up with an international standard for safe exposure to the products in our homes and offices.  Not a simple task.

 

“The particles will even adsorb to your skin, and once they’re in your skin they can diffuse into the blood.  Or, they attach to the particles in the air we breathe so there’s many routes to exposure to these semi-volatile organic compounds.”

And one of the health effects, that worries scientists, is endocrine disruption. Little is spearheading what he hopes will become a group effort to create an international testing model to determine safe levels of exposure and to identify products that should be replaced with safer materials.

“These products are made all over the world now,” says Little, “and they’re traded all around the world, so we need a consistent way of estimating exposure, globally.”

The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology are helping to support the project financially.

Little is working with colleagues in the US, Europe and China. “We’re trying to come up with a sort of consensus-based set of exposure models so we can all agree that the models we’re using are consistent.”

It’s been decades since scientists have known about the dangers of SVOCs. “What I see, when I go to conferences is, everyone is saying ‘Oh there are these SVOCs in this product or they show up in polar bears in the Arctic, and no one really seems to be trying to solve the problem.  Now we’re trying to say, ‘OK, we’ve been studying this for long enough. Now we need to try to solve the problem.”

Little wants to make it clear, he’s not looking to create some kind of ‘worst offenders’ list.  “It’s not a name and shame thing.”  He says.

“It sometimes seems to me that academics and industry often seem to be in different worlds or in opposition; an adversarial relationship. I feel that we need to work together, so we don’t want to set things up where we’re penalizing industry. I prefer a collaborative endeavor where we work with (industry) and we say, “hey look, here’s what we need to change, and have them willing to work with us.”

Little will go to China this spring to work with an international team, on uniform standards for product safety worldwide. There are plans to present their findings at a symposium in Lithuania in August.

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Categories
Blog Interfaces of Global Change IGEP News Science Communication Special Events

Grad students host first communication science conference

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From VT News

March 18, 2019

For IGC Fellow Brandon Semel, Dr. Seuss has become a key to communicating his Madagascar climate change research.

“I think of lemurs as being like the fluffy bar-ba-loots up in the truffula trees in ‘The Lorax,”” said Semel, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the fish and wildlife conservation program, about presenting to the public.

“Putting yourself in the shoes of the people you’re hoping to talk to is key,” Semel said. “And most people know a Dr. Seuss book.”

Semel was one of about 50 Virginia Tech graduate students who recently honed their abilities to connect complex topics to people as part of the campus’ first ComSciCon-Virginia Tech.

Originating from Harvard University, ComSciCon is a workshop series focused on science communication skills organized by graduate students, for graduate students. Universities, disciplines, or regions are able to franchise the series for free simply by agreeing to keep in line with the conference’s format.

Virginia Tech’s version of the conference was the brainchild of Allison Hutchison, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the rhetoric and writing program who served as the organizing committee chair. Hutchison said she began connecting last fall with other Hokies passionate about communicating science to make the two-day event happen.

“I think it was just a matter of finding the kindred spirits on campus,” she said.

One of her first calls was to Patty Raun and Carrie Kroehler, the director and associate director, respectively, of Virginia Tech’s Center for Communicating Science, which launched in spring 2017.

“Our mission is to create and support opportunities for scientists, scholars, health professionals, and others to develop their abilities to communicate and connect,” said Kroehler. “We were thrilled when a graduate student approached us last fall to ask whether we’d be interested in partnering with her to bring ComSciCon to Virginia Tech for the first time.”

Along with the Center for Communicating Science, Hutchison was also able to partner with the Graduate School, the Graduate Life Center, the Global Change Center, the Rhetoric Club, University Libraries, and the Center for Humanities. The latter two groups also hosted the lunchtime speaker, University of Minnesota’s David Perry, who spoke about “The Public Scholar in the Age of Twitter,” and a writing workshop specifically geared for faculty and students in the humanities and social sciences. Those efforts added about 30 more attendees.

The result was a ComSciCon-Virginia Tech that featured workshops and speakers on topics ranging from data visualization and tweeting to working with media outlets and crafting research stories in ways that make them both accessible and engaging to the public.

“The way you talk about research and the way you talk about science on campus is not the same as how you would talk about it out in the community,” Hutchison said.

And she believes using science to serve the public is an important part of Virginia Tech’s core mission.

“We are an R-I [Research-I] institute, but we’re also a land-grant institute,” Hutchison said.

Whitney Woelmer, a first-year master’s student studying biological sciences, agreed and said she felt being able to successfully communicate research to the public was a critical part of making that research usable and worthwhile.

“Science without an application is just science, but when you are able to put it to use, it affects everyone,” Woelmer said. “I think finding a way to engage with people is the first step.”

Written by Travis Williams

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CONTACT:
Virginia Tech News
540-231-8508

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Categories
biweekly update

Biweekly Update – March 13, 2019

New Announcements:

1.    Master Gardener College Updates:

a)    Room block information available! Book your room at The Main now! View our registration information page for more information on booking your accommodations (scroll down to “Accommodation Costs”).

2.    Master Gardener College Digital Brag Boards – Start planning your digital bragboards for 2019 College! View last year’s brag boards. More information about digital bragboard submission will be available in the next biweekly.

3.    Goochland Powhatan Master Gardeners Association 15th Annual Spring Garden Fest – April 27th, 2019

a)    “Not only is the event a fun, free festival, but attendees can also participate in a full day of classes and tours for a one-time $20 registration fee. Classes, tours, and workshops fill up quickly, so register early for the best selection.  Complete descriptions and online registration is available at https://www.gpmga.org/spring-garden-fest/”  

4.    Are you attending International Master Gardener College 2019 in Valley Forge, PA June 17-21? Let VMGA know!

5.     News & Updates from Plantsmap.com

6.     4th Virginia Urban Agriculture Summit – Virginia Beach, VA – April 23-25

7.    Healthy Living: Organic Vegetable Gardening – Greensville/Emporia – March 16th

8.    2019 Virginia Agritourism Conference – Hotel Roanoke – Roanoke, VA – Wednesday, April 3, and Thursday, April 4, 2019

a)    More info

b)    Register online select the 2019 conference

9.    Louisa Extension Master Gardeners – Backyard Gardening Seminars – Louisa, VA- March 9, 16, & 23, 2019

10. An update from National Initiative for Consumer Horticulture: 2018 accomplishments letter

11. Every Kid in a Park Program

a)    Information from Chad Proudfoot, 4H: “The program is very simple: every 4th grade student (or home school equivalent) in the United States is entitled to get one Every Kid in a Park pass which lasts through August 31 of the school year.” 

12.  Western Tidewater Master Gardeners Plant Sale  – Carrollton, VA – May 4, 2019 – 9am – 1pm

13.  4th Virginia Urban Agriculture Summit Call for Abstracts

14.   2019 Spring Virginia Judging School at the Shenandoah County Fairgrounds – Woodstock, VA  22664 – Saturday March 30, 2019

a)    More Information “The purpose of the judging school is to train and certify judges for county fairs, the State Fair of Virginia,  and other related competitions throughout the Commonwealth.”

b)    Registration form

March Announcements:

15. 2019 Sustainable Urban Agriculture Certificate Program – March 9-June 1, 2019

16. 26th Annual Gardening in the Northern Neck Seminar – White Stone, VA – March 23, 2019

a)    Website: http://nnmg.org/nngardeningseminar.asp

17. Weekly Calendar Updates – Northern Shenandoah Valley – March 2019

18. CSVMGA Bug Hotel Workshop – Central Shenandoah Valley – March 23, 2019

19. Register Now for 2019 Gardening in the Northern Neck Seminar – White Stone, VA – March 23, 2019

20. 2018 Food Security Summary – National Survey – Deadline: March 15, 2019

21. Loudoun County Gardening Symposium: “Let’s Get Growing” – Leesburg, VA – March 23, 2019 (Registration opens February 1)

22. Extension Good and Bad bugs webinar series – Feb 1 – Dec 6, 2019

a)    https://articles.extension.org/pages/74786/2019-all-bugs-good-and-bad-webinar-series

April Announcements:

23. Horticultural Horizons – Chesterfield County, VA – April 30, 2019

a)    Registration Form

24. Mid-Atlantic Garden Faire – Abingdon, VA – April 19 & 20

a)    See www.gardenfaire.net for details

25. Spring Symposium: Wild about Natives – Fredericksburg, VA – April 13, 2019

26. 2019 New Mini-Grant Application Guidelines – due April 26, 2019

a)    Please talk to your Agent or Coordinator directly if you are interested in looking at these grants.

27. Chesapeake Master Gardener Volunteers’ 2019 Annual Plant Sale – Chesapeake, VA – April 26-27, 2019

May Announcements:

28. VMGA Education Day at Virginia Western Community College – Roanoke, VA – May 4, 2019 – Deadline for registration is April 24th 9am-4pm – $18 VMGA members, $33 non members

29. Piedmont Master Gardeners and Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards Annual Sale – Charlottesville, VA – May 4, 2019

 

June Announcements:

30. Monticello | UVA 23rd Annual Historic Landscape Institute, “Preserving Jefferson’s Gardens and Landscapes” – June 23-28, 2019

a)    This one-week course uses Monticello and the University of Virginia as outdoor classrooms to study historic landscape preservation.

b)    https://www.monticello.org/sites/default/files/HLI2019Flyer.edit_.pdf

 

July Announcements:

31. Cullowhee Native Plant Conference – Western Carolina University – July 17-20, 2019

 

October Announcements:

32. Save the Date: Protecting Pollinators in Urban Landscapes –  Cincinnati, Ohio – October 7-9, 2019

Other Announcements:

33. Follow the State Office on social media:

·      Facebook

·      Instagram

·      YouTube

34. Save the date for 2019 Master Gardener College!

September 19-22, 2019, Norfolk, Virginia

35. 2019 Sustainable Urban Agriculture Certificate Program – March 9-June 1, 2019

36. Resources for fertilization of lawns and for those involved with Healthy Virginia Lawns programming  

37. Do you have questions coming in to your Extension Master Gardener program and need to find some answers? Extension Search Resources for EMG Questions

38. Registration now open for online Plant Identification Classes by Longwood Gardens and NC State – Click Here

Categories
Accolades Climate Change Ideas News Research

Virginia Tech researchers receive NSF grant to study the honey bee gut microbiome

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From VT News

March 8, 2019

Researchers from Virginia Tech were part of a collaborative $958,415 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to study the host-microbiome-parasite interactions in the honey bee gut, with $750,000 coming to Virginia Tech.

Researchers Lisa Belden, David Haak, T.M. Murali, and Richard Fell from Virginia Tech and Jenifer Walke from Eastern Washington University are collaborating to study the critical role of the honey bee gut microbiome in health and defense against parasites using a systems biology framework. 

“Using the honey bee gut microbiome as a model to study host defense against parasites could have implications for understanding the human microbiome and host defense, as well,” said Belden, the lead investigator on the grant and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science at Virginia Tech.

A microbiome is a complex community of bacteria and other microbes that inhabit a specific environment; in this case, the honey bee gut.

“We know that gut microbiomes change in response to various stressors in the environment. What we don’t yet understand are the intricate interactions that happen between the host, the microbiome, and parasites,” said Haak, assistant professor of plant and microbial genomics in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences and affiliated faculty of the Global Change Center, housed within the Fralin Life Science Institute.

Walke, now an assistant professor at Eastern Washington University, completed her Ph.D. under Belden in 2014 and returned as a postdoctoral fellow from 2015 to 2017, when she studied the microbiomes of amphibian skin and honey bees. Her postdoctoral work led her to Fell, professor emeritus in apiculture, the practice of beekeeping, in the Department of Entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

“There has been a tremendous loss in the honey bee population since the 1990s that continues to afflict U.S. beekeepers and agricultural producers. Virginia beekeepers lost almost 60 percent of their colonies over the winter of 2017-2018 — the highest percentage in state history, and almost twice the national average,” said Fell, who has studied honey bees for over 40 years.

Belden, Fell, and Walke worked together on a grant to study the effect of pesticides on honey bee gut microbiomes funded by the Virginia Department of Agriculture.

“During our research funded by this previous grant, we found that the pesticides weren’t producing any acute toxicity in the honey bee populations but there seemed to be chronic, longer-term effects on the honey bee gut microbiome. This was a spring board for our new grant, as we found that disruptions in the bacterial communities of the honey bee gut microbiome seem to make it easier for pathogens and parasites to invade,” said Fell.

Honey bees were also chosen as the model for this current grant because of their reduced gut microbiome, making it easier to test the roles of the interacting genes from the host, the microbes, and the parasites. Researchers have identified approximately 10 key components of the honey bee gut microbiome, in comparison to the thousands found in humans.

Haak will focus on sequencing the genomes of the microbes in the honey bee gut microbiome to look at the true impact of genetic variation within the microbial community and how that reflects its function. He is also working to determine which genes are actively involved in the interactions between the gut microbiome and the host using a tool called metatranscriptomics.

By starting with a simpler model, the team hopes to extrapolate the findings to advance the understanding of wildlife and human health.

“The host-microbiome-parasite interactions can be mathematically modeled as a network where, for instance, the biochemical products produced by genes from host cells directly affect the bacteria and vice versa,” said Belden, also an affiliated faculty member of the Global Change Center.

The Belden Lab at Virginia Tech studies community ecology and how species interactions influence disease dynamics. The lab focuses primarily on symbiotic microbial communities on amphibian skin and freshwater trematode parasites but has also expanded to study honey bees, songbirds, and wheat.

One goal of the newly funded study is to develop a network of the genes from the parasite, microbiome, and host to determine their interactions with each other and to develop an idea of the key points where they interact.

“We will develop computational tools that can compare the parasite-microbiome-host gene networks in different conditions (for example, between infected bees and normal bees or between a bee strain that is infected and another that is resistant to infection) to identify modules of genes that might be important for resistance to the parasite. These changes in interconnections might help in identifying focal nodes that can be tested experimentally in honey bees,” said Murali, professor of computer science in the College of Engineering and co-director of the ICTAS Center for Systems Biology of Engineered Tissues.

The researchers expect that this approach can then be applied to other systems.

Part of the grant funding allows for Haak, with the support of the team, to develop a biology and computer science-based outreach module for local elementary school students. Students and teachers will be guided through building Raspberry Pi clusters, a small computer to teach programming to beginners. Students will be doing microbiome analysis on their mini computers and develop computer science skills at a young age.

Written by Rasha Aridi and Kristin Rose

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CONTACT:
Kristin Rose
(540) 231-6614

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Categories
Climate Change News Water

RFP: Climate Change Impacts on Chesapeake Bay Restoration

The Chesapeake Bay Program’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) and the Chesapeake Research Consortium (CRC) are now accepting proposals to support a science synthesis project related to how climate change may impact on-going efforts to restore and protect the Chesapeake Bay. Appropriate topics for a STAC-sponsored science synthesis project are those where a thoughtful analysis and synthesis of available data and/or previously published results would identify, characterize, and suggest means of addressing important knowledge gaps, inform additional research, and place scientific information into a management-relevant context.

Interested parties may refer to the “Request for Proposals” document (PDF) for more detailed guidance. All proposals are DUE to STAC by Friday, May 10, 2019. If you have any questions, please contact STAC Chair Brian Benham (benham@vt.edu) or Rachel Dixon (dixonr@chesapeake.org).

– Bill Ball, CRC Executive Director, and Rachel Dixon, STAC Coordinator

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