Category: Global Change

Rhododendrons, nitrogen cycling, and global change

Post author By jcoker
Post date June 11, 2014

From VT News:

Global change research in Jeb Barrett’s lab is featured this week in VT News :

“How important is the soil beneath our feet to what grows above it?

The short answer is very, according to Virginia Tech’s Mahtaab Bagherzadeh of Annandale, Virginia, a senior majoring in biological sciences in the College of Science and a 2014 Fralin Life Science Institute Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow.

Bagherzadeh recently participated in a study that discovered invading rhododendrons affect the nitrogen cycle and surrounding plant communities.

In recent decades, rhododendron, an evergreen shrub that grows in large thick patches, has expanded in areas where there has been loss of other plant species. These species, which include hemlocks and chestnuts, have died off due to invasive pests. In particular, the rhododendron beats out other species because of its control over nitrogen, a chemical element essential for plant growth.

“What we have seen is that rhododendron acts like a native invader because it comes into places where hemlock has died off, and it takes over the soil because of its influence on the nitrogen cycle,” said Jeb Barrett, associate professor of biological sciences in the College of Science, Fralin Life Science Institute affiliate, and Bagherzadeh’s fellowship advisor.

Under Barrett’s guidance, Bagherzadeh investigated how the rhododendron invasion has affected soil ecosystems and nutrient cycling by comparing areas of land with dense rhododendron to areas with little to none.”

Read the entire article at VT News.

This story was written by Cassandra Hockman, communications assistant at the Fralin Life Science Institute.

Global Change Invasive Species

Scott Salom’s invasive species research featured on VT News

Post author By jcoker
Post date April 15, 2014

The Laricobius osakensis beetle was first released in the United States in November 2012, after six years of study under quarantine. The beetle will feed upon the woolly adelgid, an insect that has been decimating hemlock trees in the eastern U.S. for decades. The beetleâ??s introduction could help save our native eastern hemlocks.

From VT NEWS:

Scott Salom, a professor of entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has worked for years to develop ways to combat the woolly adelgid and save hemlock trees.

In 2013, he and his team of researchers released one of the hemlock woolly adelgid’s predators from its native habitat in Japan into the woods in Virginia and West Virginia. If all goes as planned, the beetle will be another tool that resource managers will have to save the treasured trees.

“We don’t want to lose the hemlocks, and we have to explore every avenue we can to save them,” Salom said. “This is a battle we feel compelled to take on.”

The Laricobius osakensis beetle was discovered in Japan in 2005, where it was feasting on the hemlock woolly adelgid and keeping its population in check. Salom obtained a permit from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to bring the beetles to Virginia Tech, where they were under quarantine for six years. During that time, he did a series of tests to ensure that the beetle wouldn’t harm other native species and would indeed go after the hemlock woolly adelgid.

In 2010, Salom got approval to release the beetles. In fall 2012, his team placed 500 into two sites where the adelgids were wreaking havoc. In 2013, 6,000 beetles were released at five additional sites, adding Maryland and Pennsylvania to the state lists.

Read the full article here.

Global Change Pollution

North Carolina Ash Spill: Regulations Meet Politics

Post author By jcoker
Post date March 1, 2014

Ash Spill Shows How Watchdog Was Defanged

North Carolina regulators say that under Gov. Pat McCrory, a weakened Department of Environment and Natural Resources has abandoned its regulatory role.

Read the complete article in the New York Times (from February 28, 2014):

http://nyti.ms/1fXJJR3

Below, an animated graphic by the Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest University shows the aftermath of the coal ash pond rupture at Duke Energy’s Dan River Steam Station.

Global Change Interfaces of Global Change IGEP News

New interdisciplinary graduate education program examines the effects of global change

Post author By jcoker
Post date November 9, 2013

The Interfaces of Global Change graduate program was recently featured in Virginia Tech News

From VT News:

Earth’s biodiversity is like a kaleidoscope made up of distinct plants and animals; however, with each year’s turn, unique and irreplaceable species disappear.

Habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, disease, and climate change are all to blame for the current rate of extinction, which is 1,000 times higher now than before human dominance, according to Bill Hopkins, associate professor of fish and wildlife conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment and Fralin Life Science Institute affiliate.

Interfaces of Global Change, a new interdisciplinary graduate education program funded by the Virginia Tech Graduate School, directed by Hopkins, and partially supported by the Fralin Life Science Institute, confronts the problem of Earth’s dwindling biodiversity with a dynamic team of faculty members and doctoral students with diverse perspectives and areas of expertise.

Incoming Ph.D. students from any department who are beginning their doctoral studies are invited to apply to the program; currently, faculty members hail from biological sciences, fish and wildlife conservation, history, biological systems engineering, civil and environmental engineering, urban affairs and planning, entomology, forest resources and environmental conservation, geosciences, and plant pathology, physiology and weed science. Students still receive their Ph.D. degree from their home department, but will focus on global change and the science-policy interface.

“The over-arching goal is to bring a diverse group of people together to discuss how global changes such as pollution, disease, and climate interact to affect the natural world that we depend on, and how we might tackle some of the most complex environmental and societal issues today,” Hopkins said. “Problem-solving depends on a diverse set of skills and perspectives, and I think the students have a chance to grow much more here than in a traditional program.”

Graduate student fellows receive research assistantship funding and participate in required interdisciplinary research courses, in which they share perspectives on major environmental problems facing the world and wrestle with complex issues such as research ethics, scientific advocacy, and how science should inform society and public policy.

Fellow Daniel Medina of Panama City, Panama, a doctoral student in biological sciences in the College of Science, said that the program has helped him better understand and articulate his role as a scientist in society. Medina works with Lisa Belden, associate professor of biological sciences in the College of Science, and studies the symbiotic skin bacteria of amphibians, and how they might be used to combat a deadly fungal disease that has caused numerous amphibian population declines and extinctions.

“The interaction with peers in other fields has given me a broader perspective,” Medina said. “The program has also helped me to realize how complex interactions with policymakers can be, even when we share common goals.”

In 2010, the Virginia Tech Graduate School launched the Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program initiative to promote interdisciplinary graduate education and research and offered the first four programs in fall 2011. Each of these education programs addresses a major fundamental problem or complex societal issue requiring an interdisciplinary team of scholars, according to Maura Borrego, associate dean and director of interdisciplinary programs in the Graduate School at Virginia Tech.

“The [Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program] approach helps a university take on bigger, more complex problems,” said Borrego, who has spent significant time researching the topic as part of a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. “It appeals to these newer generations of students we’re getting who really want to do meaningful, important work. They’re not just going to college to get a job and to get a pension and money to live on, but they really want to make a mark.”

With support from the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost and research institutes, the Graduate School currently provides funding for 14 interdisciplinary graduate education programs, which revolve around issues as diverse as water for human health and sustainable nanotechnology. Debuting this year are Interfaces of Global Change, Human Centered Design, and Bio-Inspired Buildings.

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Global Change News Pollution

IGC IGEP Faculty and Students Work in Coal Field Restoration

Post author By jcoker
Post date November 9, 2013

Dr. Jacob Barney and Dr. Stephen Schoenholtz were recently featured in a VT News article about the Powell River Project. This long-term environmental restoration project in Southwest Virginia is over 30 years old. Dr. Schoenholtz conducted his Ph.D. research there in the late 1980’s, and now his graduate student, Tony Timpano, is continuing to work on the project. Tony is investigating the impacts of salinization on benthic macroinvertebrate communities in Appalachian streams influenced by coal mining. Tony is advised by Dr. Carl Zipper and Dr. Stephen Schoenholtz.

Read the full article about the Powell River Project at VT News.

Disease Drinking water Global Change News

Probiotics for Your Pipes

Post author By jcoker
Post date November 4, 2013

The research of Dr. Amy Pruden, a core faculty member in both the Interfaces of Global Change IGEP and the Water Interfaces IGEP, was recently featured in VT News:

“A team of Virginia Tech researchers is investigating the challenges presented by four often deadly pathogens that have been documented in household or hospital tap water. They propose fighting these opportunistic pathogens with harmless microbes – a probiotic approach for cleaning up plumbing.

Writing in the American Chemical Society journal, Environmental Science and Technology, the researchers reviewed studies of opportunistic pathogens that have colonized water systems within buildings – between the delivery point and the tap. They define a probiotic approach as intentionally creating conditions that select for a desirable microbial community, or microbiome.

“We are putting forward a new way of thinking about waterborne pathogen control,” said Amy Pruden, a professor of civil and environmental engineering whose sustainable water research is supported by the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science at Virginia Tech.

“We have new tools – the next generation DNA-sequencing tools, which have just come online in the last five years,” Pruden said. “They are providing unprecedented information about microbes in all sorts of environments, including “clean” drinking water. These tools have really surprised us by showing us the numbers and diversity of microbes. There can be thousands of different species of bacteria in a household water supply.”

The researchers focused on several opportunistic pathogens, including Legionella, the infamous cause of deadly Legionnaires’ disease and milder Pontiac fever; Mycobacterium avium complex, which causes pulmonary risks and is the most costly waterborne disease in terms of individual hospital visits; and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the leading cause of hospital-acquired infections.

In addition, they looked at pathogenic free-living amoebae, which are host microorganisms that enhance the growth of bacterial pathogens in water, particularly Legionella and M. avium, by protecting them and providing a place for them to multiply.

Pruden, who still prefers to drink tap rather than bottled water, points out that these pathogens are “opportunistic” because they are most dangerous to people who are ill, such as those already in a hospital, and people with weaker immune systems, including the elderly.

“Pathogens from feces are dealt with by filtering or disinfecting. They are native to warm-blood animals and don’t survive long outside that environment. These next-generation pathogens live in biofilms in water systems,” Pruden said. “We need to develop a better understanding of conditions and types of bacteria in order to have a better opportunity to fight water-borne disease.”

Read the full article:

http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2013/11/110413-ictas-amyprudenmicrobes.html#.UnfGhfZIeMw.link

Climate Change Disease Global Change News

Moose Die-Off Alarms Scientists

Post author By jcoker
Post date October 16, 2013

Moose populations across North America are experiencing a sharp decline, and the exact cause is a mystery.

“What exactly has changed remains a mystery. Several factors are clearly at work. But a common thread in most hypotheses is climate change.

Winters have grown substantially shorter across much of the moose’s range. In New Hampshire, a longer fall with less snow has greatly increased the number of winter ticks, a devastating parasite. “You can get 100,000 ticks on a moose,” said Kristine Rines, a biologist with the state’s Fish and Game Department.

In Minnesota, the leading culprits are brain worms and liver flukes. Both spend part of their life cycles in snails, which thrive in moist environments.

Another theory is heat stress. Moose are made for cold weather, and when the temperature rises above 23 degrees Fahrenheit in winter, as has happened more often in recent years, they expend extra energy to stay cool. That can lead to exhaustion and death.

In the Cariboo Mountains of British Columbia, a recent study pinned the decline of moose on the widespread killing of forest by an epidemic of pine bark beetles, which seem to thrive in warmer weather. The loss of trees left the moose exposed to human and animal predators.”

Read the full New York Times article here.

Global Change Research Video

Dr. Bill Hopkins talks about the ecological importance of eastern hellbenders

Post author By jcoker
Post date May 21, 2013

Bill Hopkins, professor in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation and Director of the Global Change Center, talks about eastern hellbenders and their ecological importance in this Virginia Tech field interview.

Learn more about Dr. Hopkins’ research on hellbenders.