Category: Water

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VT researcher working to provide clean water to Appalachia

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From CALS VT News  |  June 20, 2020

More than 2 million Americans live without access to safe drinking water or adequate sewer sanitation, according to a 2019 study by the U.S. Water Alliance. That includes around a quarter-million people in Puerto Rico and half a million homeless people in the United States. The biggest chunk, though — around 1.4 million people — are United States residents who live in homes that don’t have proper plumbing or tap water.

They are clustered in five areas: California’s Central Valley; predominantly Native American communities near the four corners of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico; the Texas-Mexico border; the Mississippi Delta region in Mississippi and Alabama; and central Appalachia. Virginia alone has around 20,000 homes without plumbing.

Leigh-Anne Krometis, an associate professor of biological systems engineering which is in both the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, is one of the foremost experts on water quality and availability in Appalachia. And while the basics of her work seem, well, basic — “I just spent a decade proving that not having sewers is a bad thing, which we’ve known for literally thousands of years,” she said — the implications are more complex.

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Often, the best minds in American civil and environmental engineering are looking abroad, at how to bring clean water to remote villages and slums in developing countries. The crisis over lead in the tap water in Flint, Michigan, was a reminder that all over the United States, people lack access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.

In the past three years, Krometis has authored a series of studies of water quality and availability in the Appalachian region. In 2017, she published “Tracking the Downstream Impacts of Inadequate Sanitation in Central Appalachia” in the “Journal of Water and Health.”

That article looked at what happens to streams when homes near them don’t have proper plumbing. Usually, that means a “straight pipe” that carries untreated sewage into an unlined hole in the ground, which drains either directly or indirectly into a stream. Krometis and her team found E. coli bacteria consistent with untreated human waste in those streams, in spots that were correlated with their proximity to homes without proper sewage systems. Sometimes the contamination carried as far as six miles downstream.

 

Image of Leigh-Anne Krometis

Krometis’ newest article on the subject, “Water Scavenging from Roadside Springs in Appalachia,” published in May 2019 in the “Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education,” connects her earlier research on wastewater to the issue of drinking water. Some untold number of people in Appalachia drink untreated water from springs or streams — often the same streams that are close to straight sewage pipes. Krometis and her team tested the water at 21 springs used for drinking water, and more than 80 percent of them tested positive for E. coli.

Krometis also surveyed people who drink untreated spring water, and found that most of them do have running water in their homes, often from wells. They said they preferred the spring water because it tastes better than their tap water, or because they don’t trust the quality and reliability of the water in their homes.

Fixing these two interrelated problems, of wastewater and drinking water, isn’t easy. The homes that use straight pipes and roadsides springs tend to be far away from the nearest municipal sewer and water systems, and often separated by mountains and ravines. It could cost $50,000 or more to hook one of these homes up to a sewer system, even if there is one nearby, Krometis said. Septic tanks are usually unsuitable because the soil isn’t deep enough.

“These are legitimately challenging engineering problems, and they require a lot of money, and these places don’t have a lot of money,” she said. “We haven’t figured out ways to get water and sewer to extremely rural areas, and there are also huge issues with the homeless and the working poor in urban areas.”

There are cheaper and easier solutions, of the type used in developing countries. Public water kiosks for drinking water are one, and are already in use in some parts of Kentucky and West Virginia; small water or sewer treatment devices installed for each home or cluster of homes are another option. Krometis supports these tactics, though she sees the political and cultural obstacles to using them in the United States.

“The technologies that are best practices in Africa or Southeast Asia, we don’t use in the United States. They’re unacceptable because we’re a developed country,” she said. “But in my mind, if you have somebody who’s impoverished and doesn’t have access to clean water, that’s a problem that we need to address.”

People are hesitant to give residents of Appalachian mountain hollows or California’s dry and dusty farm town water and sewer systems that aren’t up to the standards of their fellow Americans in cities and suburbs. Krometis understands that hesitation, but she also understands that many of those poor Americans are going without any access to reliable, clean water.

“I see both sides of the coin,” she said. “The problem is, we’re not even having that debate.”

 

Written by Tony Biasotti

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Accolades Faculty Spotlight Water

Heartfelt thanks to Fred Benfield, professor emeritus of Biological Sciences

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]April 20, 2020

Virginia Tech hosts a number of distinguished and treasured faculty, and one of the most colorful is Fred Benfield. He is an aquatic ecologist, and throughout his career, has contributed to that field in a number of ways. Benfield’s research focused on stream biodiversity, freshwater macroinvertebrates, leaf litter decomposition, and land-use effects on stream communities and ecosystems, and his research on the role of freshwater macroinvertebrates in leaf litter decomposition is foundational in the world of stream ecology.

GCC affiliate Lisa Belden recalls some of her favorite experiences with Fred in the summer of 2008, when they co-advised an undergraduate on a summer research project.  They spent the summer re-surveying 37 streams in the region that had populations of stream snails in them, according to a survey done in the 1980s by one of Fred’s previous undergraduate advisees. Lisa was interested in finding out what parasites were using those snails as hosts, and a large-scale field survey seemed like the best way to get started.  She noted, “I was pre-tenure, stressed, and struggling to establish myself and get my first grant funded, and Fred had been studying streams and their aquatic insects in this region for a long time.  Heading out to the field with Fred was, I imagine, not dissimilar from going for a walk in the woods with any master naturalist who knows all the plants and animals and their life histories.”  Fred was well-known for having  a detailed map in his head of every stream in at least a 5-county area, of the land use and flooding history at every site, and the creatures that live there.  Looking for the East Fork of Crooked Creek?  Fred can probably drive you there with his eyes closed, and regale you with stories along the way of past students and adventures in stream ecology.

Much of Fred’s work was performed in collaboration with Jack Webster, also Biological Sciences faculty at VT, through the Coweeta Long Term Ecological Research site, at which he and Webster were both long-term PIs. As an instructor, Fred inspired generations of students in Freshwater Biology, Ecology, and Field and Laboratory Ecology for many years. He was also mentor to a large number of graduate students, many of whom have transitioned into successful careers of their own, including, but not limited to Eric Sokol, Chris Burcher, Kevin Simon, Ryan Sponseller, and Bob Sinsabaugh. Benfield is also a well-known and respected figure in the international Society for Freshwater Science (formerly the North American Benthological Society) where he has been editor and chief of the journal, received the Distinguished Service Award (2012), and served as society president.

One of Benfield’s most enduring legacies is as co-founder, along with Jack Webster, of the Virginia Tech Stream Team, an internationally recognized influencer in aquatic ecology. What began as simple research meetings between their two labs has evolved into a research group that now contains the labs of 6 Principal Investigators at Virginia Tech. While Benfield and Webster are both retired, they still often attend weekly Stream Team meetings where they often provide invaluable historical perspective on science, Virginia Tech, and life in general.

However, to limit Fred Benfield’s contributions to strictly science and instruction would be to do him a disservice. He is a personality, a character, and a great mentor to all. And not just students. GCC affiliate Bryan Brown noted that Benfield was his faculty mentor when he was junior faculty and Benfield has served as mentor for numerous other faculty in both formal and informal capacities.

He is also a long-time member of the VT NBA (Noontime Basketball Association) where he is infamous for his running one-footed jump shot, pointy elbows, and a gruff exterior behind which hides one of the kindest and most generous souls to grace the courts at War Memorial. He is also a popular figure in the Society for Freshwater Science, and at annual meetings, most evenings he can be found participating in the SFS Jam, along with assorted banjos, bagpipes, vocals, and kazoos.

Working with Fred reminds everyone that you need to get outside if you hope to glean any ecological understanding of the world; knowing a system requires us to be out in it, to learn natural history, and doing that requires time.  Sometimes it is easy to think that time spent in the field is a luxury, minutes stolen from writing grant proposals, but actually, it is essential to all we do as ecologists.  So in honor of Fred’s retirement, please take a moment to go for a walk, to learn the trees in your neighborhood, to flip over a rock and see what is there.  Spend your time doing something that matters to you, and thank those that helped you get where you are today.  Thank you, Fred!

–Written by Lisa Belden, Bryan Brown, & Jeb Barrett,
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Blog Climate Change Conservation Drinking water Educational Outreach Global Change Research Water

Virginia Water Center recognized as a national leader in water education and outreach

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News | February 24, 2020

For the first time, the Virginia Water Resources Research Center, housed at Virginia Tech, received a status of “outstanding” from the U.S. Department of the Interior. Virginia’s Water Center was one of 12 such centers in the nation to receive this designation.

“The water center operates as something of a clearinghouse and a focal point for water education, outreach, and research at Virginia Tech,” explained Professor Stephen Schoenholtz, director of the Virginia Water Center and a faculty member in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation. “We’re an independent, nonsiloed place to foster and promote research on water issues across a wide range of areas.”

The Virginia Water Resources Research Center traces its origins to the federal Water Resources Research Act of 1964, which sought to establish research centers on matters related to water supply, water quality protection, and water resource management in all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. Virginia Tech was selected to house the commonwealth’s center in 1965. The Virginia Water Resources Research Center was written into the Code of Virginia by the General Assembly in 1982 and is currently housed within Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment.

U.S. water centers and institutes that are part of the 1964 act receive funding in five-year cycles, and their output is evaluated by an independent panel of scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey. The most recent review, for the years 2011 through 2015, credited the program as having done an exemplary job of communicating water news and information to the broader public. The Virginia Water Resources Research Center was further praised for its focus on research aimed at solving state water issues.

“Engagement and outreach have been a big focus for our center over the last decade,” Schoenholtz said. “We aim to provide unbiased information for water resource management decisions that are being made at the state, regional, and national level.”

Among the center’s outreach efforts is a database of breaking water news stories, water-related legislation decisions and documents, and links to information about water-related subjects pertaining to the state. The center produces Virginia Water Radio, a weekly program focusing on a specific water issue or topic of interest in Virginia. The broadcasts are tied to the Virginia Standards of Learning and can be used in K-12 classrooms throughout the state.

The center provides seed grants for undergraduate and graduate students studying water resources and funds an internship program for undergraduate students at Virginia Tech. This spring, two interns traveled with Schoenholtz to Washington, D.C., to meet with federal policymakers to discuss water issues affecting Virginia. The center also led Virginia Tech in developing a unique undergraduate degree program in water: resources, policy, and management, which takes an interdisciplinary approach to water science, management, and policy.

Looking ahead, Schoenholtz would like to increase student training and expand grant opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. Discussions are also underway about offering master’s and doctoral degrees in water science.

“Water issues range from very local, affecting individual households, to global scales that affect everyone, and those challenges are only going to increase in the face of climate change and growing population,” Schoenholtz noted. “With the Virginia Water Center, we have a wide range of possibilities to address these challenges while working to keep the public aware of the numerous resources available to them.”

Written by David Fleming

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Krista Timney
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Researchers seek to impact New Zealand water quality by understanding forest-water interactions

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News | February 7, 2020

Forest systems, a crucial resource for fresh water around the world, are under increasing pressure from global change factors like climate change, population growth, and land management decisions. To meet future demands for clean water, scientists need a clear understanding of the dynamics of water and nutrients in forest systems.

To broaden understanding of those systems, two faculty members in Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment are partnering with the New Zealand government-owned research entity Scion. They are undertaking an ambitious collaborative project that will utilize remote sensing technology, isotopic tracing, and manipulative field studies to develop a comprehensive model of water and nutrient flow through forested watersheds and streams.

“One of the big questions facing New Zealand is how climate change drivers and land use changes are going to affect ecosystem services,” explained Associate Professor Brian Strahm, of the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation. “There is a lot of uncertainty about what the future will look like. The broad purpose of this grant is to try to reduce some of that uncertainty and give the people of New Zealand confidence in their land use choices going forward.”

The five-year research project, called Forest Flows, will develop forest hydrology models to measure and predict the storage and release of water in forest catchments while simultaneously allowing scientists to collect data on nutrient cycling, with a particular emphasis on the export, utilization, and cycling of nitrogen.

“A major goal is to disentangle the soil and hydrologic processes controlling nutrient cycling and export from forested watersheds,” said Associate Professor Kevin McGuire, also of the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation and associate director of the Virginia Water Resources Research Center. “You can’t really look at the cycling of nitrogen at the watershed level without understanding how it’s transported and reacts within soil.”

To explore that question, researchers will use isotopic “tracers” in the water and in nitrogen to measure the movement of water and nutrients through a forest system.

“We’ll be using stable isotopes to track the movement of water and nitrogen through these systems,” Strahm said. “It’s a little like putting a flag or a tracker on a molecule of water or an atom of nitrogen and seeing where it goes through the environment.”

This research will build on their recent study published in the journal Water Resources Researchthat modeled hillslope water flow to estimate how natural systems behave in response to land use or climate changes. The research was carried out at the U.S. Forest Service’s Coweeta Hydrological Lab in North Carolina.

“The hillslope study is what got us in the ballgame with Scion,” Strahm said. “Our experimental hillslope is tightly controlled, which allows us to do very specific manipulations of precipitation. We can basically make our own rain or alter nitrogen availability in that system. Scion would like us to build on that kind of work, adjusting those experimental variables so that they are relevant to the future of New Zealand.”

Recognized as a global leader in forest hydrological research in the 1970s and 1980s, New Zealand has experienced a significant land use shift from forestry to cattle and dairy. As a result of that shift, and as climate change threatens more periods of flooding and drought, there is increasing attention on the ways that land management decisions will impact water quality in the future.

“New Zealand wants to understand this challenge at the scale of their nation, so that they can better understand how independent land management decisions will scale up to impact water quality moving ahead,” Strahm said. “They want to be prepared to deal with future climate change drivers and make sure that their land use decisions are compatible with their social and cultural values.”

While the project is focused on the unique challenges of New Zealand forest watersheds, both professors, who are affiliated faculty members of the Global Change Center housed under Virginia Tech’s Fralin Life Sciences Institute, noted that this research has both local and global implications.

“The issues we’re looking at in New Zealand are applicable anywhere,” McGuire said. “Here in Virginia, most of our drinking water originates in forested watersheds. What happens in those forests and how water is used has huge implications for water quality and availability.”

The project’s total grant amount of approximately $9 million (NZ$13,736,775) is funded to Scion by the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment. Virginia Tech’s subcontract from Scion will include support for a student researcher to participate in the project.

-Written by David Fleming

 

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Krista Timney
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Bye-bye mayfly: Can the burrowing mayfly’s decline serve as a warning system for the health of our environment?

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News | February 6, 2020

Sally Entrekin Field
Sally Entrekin samples a stream in search of aquatic insects, including mayfly nymphs.

 

Mayflies have long been indicators of the ecological health of the lakes, rivers, and streams. The more mayflies present in water, the better the water quality.

But scientists from Virginia Tech and the University of Notre Dame recently discovered that a particular species — the burrowing mayfly — had a population decrease of nearly 84 percent from 2015 to 2019. The measurements, using radar, took place during the annual insect emergence events at Lake Erie, when the transition of almost 88 billion insects moving from the waterways to the air marks one of world’s largest annual insect emergence events.

Although it was previously impossible to analyze the emergence of the burrowing mayfly, researchers were finally able to do so by using meteorological radar data and new methods in tracking the presence of airborne creatures. By observing the swarms on a year-to-year basis, the data showed a shockingly simple trend: over the same timeframe and time of year, the mayfly swarms are growing smaller.

“This refined radar technology that allows for tracking and quantifying aquatic insect populations at such a large scale is instrumental in understanding land-water connections,” explained Sally Entrekin, an associate professor in the Department of Entomology in the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The finding speaks to more than just the mayfly’s decline: It highlights the growing problem of insect decline and the cascading effects that has on ecosystems around the world.

“Radar technology — coupled with traditional field sampling — can start to address the scope and magnitude of insect declines from global change in aquatic ecosystems,” said Entrekin.

Entrekin and her colleagues, Phil Stepanian, Charlotte Wainwright, Djordje Mirkovic, Jennifer Tank, and Jeffrey Kelly, recently published their findings in the Proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences.

The emergence is visually spectacular (where the skies are darkened by the shear mass of flying insects), but this event also represents a new availability of food for many creatures throughout the food chain, providing more than 3,000 tons of insects for consumption by birds and other land-based plants and animals.

Adult_mayfly
An adult burrowing mayfly. Image credit (also header image): Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University, Bugwood.org

 

Fish, birds, bats, and other animals consume the mayflies as a source of food and nutrients. Some insect-eating birds in these areas have synchronized breeding habits that coincide with mayfly emergence, and they rely on them as a high-quality food source for their young. These bird populations have also taken a downturn, which has been partially attributed to the lack of insects to eat, particularly aquatic insects.

Historically, negative human impacts on mayfly habitat has led to reductions and disappearances of the mayfly swarms. While conservation and habitat rehabilitation have helped to clean up the waterways and bring back the mayflies, in the Mississippi, Ohio, and Illinois rivers, as well as Lake Erie, efforts to bring back the mayfly swarms took nearly 20 years to reach their previous levels. As the research shows, it appears the swarms are once again declining.

Multiple stressors in these waterways attributed to human activity could be a reason for the reduction in mayfly populations. A warming climate puts more stress on certain aquatic environments, leading to decreased oxygen levels, which can result in fewer mayflies coming out of the water. Runoff from rivers into the warmer surface waters of Lake Erie, for instance, can cause algae blooms, which release toxins that these mayflies are especially susceptible to.

Another type of runoff from agricultural land carries commonly applied pesticides, particularly neonicotinoids, which can kill mayflies as immatures in the water. Even when these pesticides are present in nondeadly levels, they can negatively affect mayfly young by stunting their ability to reach adult stage. Many of these factors likely contribute to the decreasing mayfly populations, and policy and conservation efforts will be needed in order to change this trend.

Global insect population decline is an emerging topic that has sparked public awareness, however there are logistical challenges to analyzing these trends. Monitoring the life-cycle of the burrowing mayfly and other aquatic insects offers an early warning system for changes in our ecosystems.

This monitoring system is also applicable in other parts of the world where large aquatic emergence events occur, and it can be useful in pinpointing regions that would benefit from waterway conservation efforts or ecological rehabilitation efforts. With the impact the climate crisis is having on ecosystems, tracking the emergence of certain aquatic insects could serve to motivate and inform the public as to the effect humans are having on their local waterways.

 

Sally_Entrekin_and_lab
Sally Entrekin and her lab on a collecting trip

CONTACT:

James Mason
540-231-6826

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Helping coastal communities face the challenges posed by flooding and sea level rise

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News | December 3, 2019

As coastal communities continue to be threatened by more frequent and severe storms and sea level rise, there is a demand to better understand the challenges these communities face and to develop effective resilience strategies to deal with those challenges.

Assistant Professor Anamaria Bukvic of the College of Natural Resources and Environment is using a fellowship from the National Center for Atmospheric Research to look into the issue of population mobility in the face of coastal vulnerability.

Bukvic, a faculty member in the Department of Geography and an affiliate of the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech, housed in the Fralin Life Sciences Institute, was selected as a Fellow of the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Early Career Faculty Innovator Program, which provides funding for Fellows to partake in convergence research that tackles a specific pressing issue and addresses both its physical and social dimensions. This year’s research theme was “Coastal Regions and Human Settlements.”

“Recurrent flooding and other hazards in coastal areas represent a very complex and unique challenge that can only be resolved by holistic problem-solving,” said Bukvic, a co-leader of the Coastal@VT initiative.

“We already know a lot about the physical risks but much less about the human aspects, such as risk perceptions, values, attitudes, and behaviors,” she continued. “We need to understand how social systems respond to coastal flooding and accelerated sea level rise so that we can develop more effective policies and programs for adaptation in coastal communities.”

Bukvic’s research focuses on the subject of coastal vulnerability to flooding and, more specifically, on flood-induced population displacement and relocation. During her summer residency at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) facility in Boulder, Colorado, she established new collaborations with NCAR scientists and other Fellows to study the issue from different disciplinary angles and by using novel methodologies.

“A great strength of this program is that it includes both social and physical scientists,” Bukvic said. “It’s not just STEM-based — there are strong elements of social science as well. We have the opportunity to not only work with unique data sets provided by NCAR but also to interact and collaborate with scientists from a diverse range of disciplines who are all working on the issue of coastal resilience.”

In addition to supporting early career faculty, NCAR’s Innovator Program provides funds for graduate students to participate. Aaron Whittemore, a master’s student in geography at Virginia Tech, accompanied Bukvic to NCAR.

“It was a great experience,” Whittemore said. “All of the professors involved were in the early stages of their careers, and they were really motivated. New ideas were constantly sparking up during meetings, and I learned a lot, even outside the science work, just by talking to these professors. It was exciting to see how they came together to create really collaborative work.”

Whittemore spent the summer researching the factors that affect how people feel about places where they live. Those factors will be used to develop a sense-of-place metric to help scientists better understand why some people prefer to relocate and others to stay in place despite the risks.

For Bukvic, a native of Croatia, the experience of living close to the sea is a familiar one, and she recognizes the challenges in speaking to communities about sea level rise.

“Growing up, I always looked forward to summers on the Adriatic Sea. It’s given me an appreciation for the coastal culture and lifestyle and the many ecosystem services coastal environments provide. I understand that any discussion about whether people should stay in place or move away from the coast is a difficult one. It’s important to think about climate processes within the context of adaptive adjustments that would help people cope with flooding as well as safely relocate when staying in place is no longer possible.”

As a part of the two-year long fellowship, Bukvic will spend another summer residency at the NCAR facility, where she and graduate student Jack Gonzales will work with NCAR collaborators and other Fellows on the new convergence research efforts. Some of these efforts will benefit from NCAR’s capacity to provide unique data and skill sets, as well as expertise in specific disciplinary domains.

Written by David Fleming

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Researcher receives NSF grant to study the fate of terrestrial carbon in freshwater ecosystems

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News | November 25, 2019

Carbon serves as the building block of life — it cycles through every organism, the environment, and the atmosphere to make Earth capable of sustaining life.

Freshwater ecosystems may cover less than one percent of the Earth’s surface, but they play an active role in the global carbon cycle through carbon respiration and sequestration.

Through photosynthesis, terrestrial trees and plants take in carbon dioxide (CO2) and water to produce carbohydrates and oxygen. When plants die, the organic carbon that makes up their leaves, stems, and roots decays in the soil. But landscapes are “leaky” — some carbon seeps into the groundwater and travels through streams and rivers before being cycled back into the atmosphere. How carbon moves through a landscape and across land-water boundaries has implications for water quality and freshwater food webs.

Erin Hotchkiss, an ecosystem ecologist and assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science, and her collaborators received a $1.12 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study how carbon moves across land-water boundaries and the multi-scale consequences of terrestrial carbon losses for freshwater ecosystems and global carbon budgets.

“Streams are the gutters and recycling centers of a landscape — what we see in terms of water quality and biology in streams reflects not only what’s happening in the waterway itself, but it is also an indicator of what is happening on the surrounding landscape,” said Hotchkiss, an affiliated member of the Global Change Center, housed within the Fralin Life Sciences Institute. “We can’t understand the fate of terrestrial carbon without linking landscapes with their waterways.”

Carbon cycling in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems are rarely studied together. Hotchkiss and her team are working to understand how materials and energy move across ecosystem boundaries and how that alters biological functions, such as metabolism, and greenhouse gas emissions in streams. Stream metabolism, the balance between photosynthesis and respiration, is a fundamental process that contributes to water quality and food web production.

Forests are carbon sinks, or natural carbon reservoirs, but streams play an opposite role in the carbon cycle — they are often carbon sources that emit CO2 and methane to the atmosphere. When co-located streams and forests are considered as a single unit, scientists can help fill in a critical knowledge gap in the global carbon budget by addressing a key question: What is the fate of terrestrial carbon? To address this, Hotchkiss’ research will link measurements of how much carbon is stored in forests after photosynthesis, how much leaks into streams, and how much is respired and emitted by streams.

“From global budgeting perspectives, we’re still missing this concept of landscapes leaking carbon across terrestrial-aquatic boundaries,” said Hotchkiss. “Being able to quantify and propose a framework for including how much carbon moves from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems and what that means for CO2 emissions is needed to improve future budgets of where carbon sources and sinks are located across the globe.”

Four images from the same NEON study site in Alaska’s Caribou Creek depict the various seasons of the Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. An instrument is located in the center of the stream. Courtesy of the PhenoCam Network.
Images taken throughout 2018 at the NEON study site in Alaska’s Caribou Creek. Courtesy of the PhenoCam Network.

The fate of carbon from terrestrial-aquatic exchanges is still a mystery. To investigate, Hotchkiss will use sites established by the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), a research effort focused on understanding how terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems across the United States change over time.

Hotchkiss and her team of professors, students, and postdocs will make use of NEON’s ongoing terrestrial and aquatic measurements while also installing new CO2 sensors produced by industry collaborators. These sensors will collect stream CO2 data throughout the day, season, and year. Integrating CO2 sensor and NEON data will allow them to compare carbon emissions with carbon cycling and movement across the landscape.

“To better understand the role of streams in the carbon cycle, we need long-term, high-frequency CO2 data. These sensors will provide information on the magnitude and variability of emissions and will allow us to test our understanding of the biological, geophysical, and climate drivers of CO2 emissions,” Hotchkiss said. “There are only five NEON sites with co-located terrestrial and aquatic measurements, but they’re all very different, ranging from boreal Arctic to temperate grasslands and even a small, forested watershed nearby in Tennessee.”

Outside of the project’s research objectives, Hotchkiss is planning to work with K-12 educators, who will be awarded fellowships to develop inquiry-based lesson plans that make use of publically available NEON data. Each lesson plan will be tailored to the grade level, curriculum, and educator’s goals. In some classes, students will build sensors that will be used to collect the same types of high-frequency data that informs Hotchkiss’ research.

“It is really important for us to get out of our lab space and communicate our science with other people. One of the greatest impacts we can have is by working with teachers to develop tools to share science and the scientific experience more widely,” Hotchkiss said.

Hotchkiss led this grant in collaboration with David Butman of the University of Washington, Wil Wollheim of the University of New Hampshire, Jay Jones of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Kaelin Cawley and Keli Goodman of NEON. Of the total $1.12 million, Hotchkiss will receive $490,000 at Virginia Tech.

—   Written by Rasha Aridi

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Kristin Rose
(540) 231-6614

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IGC Fellows take on ReNew the New: Giles County Edition

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August 30, 2019

By Lauren Wind

Early on the morning of August 28th, twenty IGC fellows and friends met in the dense fog at the Eggleston Community Park to take part in an epic “Fall into the New” New River cleanup endeavor. ReNew the New, a group comprised of multiple local NGOs, outfitters, local government officials, and concerned citizens, focuses on the stewardship of 37 miles of the New River that run through Giles County, VA. They sponsor two major river cleanup events each year. his event also included cleanup of New River miles winding throughout the valley in Montgomery Co, Pulaski Co, Floyd Co, and Radford.

In an effort to keep the New River clean and pristine, we were charged with pairing up in canoes or solo trips in kayaks to retrieve as much trash as we could fit in our vessels along a four mile stretch in Giles Co. Before we embarked on our journey, ReNew the New founder Ann Geotte spoke words of wisdom to us: “Do not be upset if you don’t get a tire… this isn’t an Easter egg hunt!” From that moment on, the challenge was upon us IGC Fellows to collect the most tires. And we did not disappoint!

In total we collected 18 tires, one sleeping bag and pillow set, four cans of unopened beers, dozens of empty cans, a table, and countless other items. Shout out to Stephen Plont, who deemed himself the winner by finding… a Porta-Potty within the first half-mile stretch of the river. It was all hands-on deck to pull most of these items out of the water, and some of us had to leave our safe and dry vessels to retrieve sunken tires and trash. Our efforts were rewarded with internal bragging rights to each other on what we found, soaking up sunny rays on the river, and a lunch and t-shirt following the event.

Please visit ReNew the New’s Volunteer page to learn more about future volunteer events; and to view the statistics on how much trash collectively was retrieved throughout “Fall into the New” event this fall.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Conservation News Research Science Communication Seminars, Workshops, Lectures Special Events Water

‘Leaving no stone unturned’ at the Ninth Eastern Hellbender Symposium

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Header image: The hellbender is one of the largest salamanders in North America and its populations are plummeting. A male eastern hellbender guards his eggs in an underwater nest box. Photo Credit: Cathy Jachowski.

 

From VT News | July 15, 2019

With support from the Fralin Life Sciences Institute at Virginia Tech and several other co-sponsors, the ninth Biennial Hellbender Symposium recently held three days of talks, exhibitions, and poster sessions.

The hellbender, Cryptobranchus alleganiensis, is one of the largest salamanders in North America and the third largest salamander in the world after the closely related Chinese and Japanese giant salamanders. Two subspecies of hellbenders can be found along the Appalachian mountains and in the Ozarks of Missouri.

Despite the hellbender’s fearsome appearance, it’s known for paternal care of its offspring, the subject of an ongoing study by symposium co-organizer and hellbender expert, William Hopkins, professor of fish and wildlife conservation in the College of Natural Resources and the Environment and director of the Global Change Center.

In the past decade, populations of the hellbender have plummeted, and researchers are baffled as to why. Although adults can be found in the wild, few juveniles or young adults are found during surveys. Researchers have posited many possible causes: sedimentation caused by deforestation; pollution from fracking in the eastern mountains; loss of habitat due to a number of factors, climate change and agriculture among them; and the onset of the now globally ubiquitous chytrid fungus, a pathogen originating in Asia and spread through the pet trade.

The symposium was founded nearly 20 years ago as a means for researchers from academia, NGOs, zoos/aquaria, and state and federal agencies to gather and exchange information about their findings and the strides they’re making toward understanding the species’ decline and efforts toward its recovery. Professor Emeritus Thomas Pauley of Marshall University and this year’s keynote speaker, said, “I’ve been attending this symposium from the beginning and it has really provided a nucleus of research and community for those working with this species.”

Sometimes, with a species so seemingly secretive and difficult to study, one of the symposium’s best features is the camaraderie and information exchange it provides for researchers.

This year’s panels and presentations featured numerous talks about strategies for helping boost the hellbender’s populations — from a variety of underwater nest box designs to sharing data about the changing nature of the rivers and streams that hellbenders inhabit. For example, several research teams displayed modifications of concrete nest designs that allow researchers to monitor hellbenders in the wild and also serve as a valuable habitat restoration tool. Hopkins’ team has successfully used their box design to conduct innovative studies of the reproductive ecology of this poorly understood species.

Educators talk with symposium attendees about their educational programs.
An outreach table at the ninth Hellbender Symposium. Photo Credit: Kristin Rose.

 

Other presentations delved into the ways in which hellbenders are studied and whether or not better techniques might lead to better results in terms of tracking and survivorship. One study in particular by Stephanie Morrison, a graduate student at Missouri State University, looked at how electrofishing, a common technique for surveying fish populations, might be detrimental for hellbenders.

Researchers also discussed the environmental impacts on streams that some of them have been monitoring for decades. Populations in eastern Ohio have dropped 82 percent in the past decade. With the rise of fracking, streams are showing much heavier sedimentation and pollution than in previous years. One fracking company in eastern Ohio self-reported over 70 watershed violations. Gregory Lipps of Ohio State University asked rather poignantly, “Is the original goal of having self-sustaining hellbender populations realistic? Are we just buying time for what we hope is a better future?”

In the face of such alarming signs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was in attendance to discuss its ongoing assessment of the eastern subspecies and whether it, or any of its distinct population groups, should be federally protected as threatened or endangered. The Ozark hellbender subspecies is already considered critically endangered and received federal protection.

“Such a bleak outlook for the species can be a bit depressing, but this symposium always gives me hope,” said Hopkins. “It is inspiring to see nearly 100 experts gather to compare notes in hopes of saving this species from the brink of extinction. Scientists came to Blacksburg from as far as Japan to help address this conservation challenge. The passion in the room was palpable.”

Researchers check out various concrete nest box designs.
Researchers checking out concrete nest boxes that help to protect the salamander population. Photo credit: Kristin Rose.

One thing that was clear from all the talks, posters, and updates given from the hellbender’s range: each population is unique, often responding differently to the same recovery technique that is successful elsewhere. What works well in Missouri may not work as well in North Carolina or New York and no one is sure why. All that can be done is to keep trying, keep innovating on what works and modifying it to specific field conditions.

Pauley encouraged his successors in the study of salamanders never to lose their curiosity or sense of wonder: “Leave no stone unturned. You never know what might be under there.”

~Written by Tiffany Trent

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CONTACT:

Kristin Rose

(540) 231-6614

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Climate Change Drinking water Ideas New Publications Pollution Science Communication Water

Human domination of the global water cycle absent from depictions and perceptions

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From Science Daily | June 10, 2019

Pictures of the earth’s water cycle used in education and research throughout the world are in urgent need of updating to show the effects of human interference, according to new analysis by an international team of hydrology experts.

Leaving humans out of the picture, the researchers argue, contributes to a basic lack of awareness of how humans relate to water on Earth — and a false sense of security about future availability of this essential and scarce resource.

The team has drawn up a new set of diagrams to promote better understanding of how our water cycle works in the 21st century. These new diagrams show human interference in nearly all parts of the cycle.

The study, published in Nature Geoscience, with an additional comment in Nature, was carried out by a large team of experts from Brigham Young University and Michigan State University in the US and the University of Birmingham in the UK, along with partners in the US, France, Canada, Switzerland and Sweden.

It showed that, in a sample of more than 450 water cycle diagrams in textbooks, scientific literature and online, 85 per cent showed no human interaction at all with the water cycle, and only 2 per cent of the images made any attempt to connect the cycle with climate change or water pollution.

In addition, nearly all the examples studied depicted verdant landscapes, with mild climates and abundant freshwater — usually with only a single river basin.

The researchers argue there is an urgent need to challenge this misrepresentation and promote a more accurate and sophisticated understanding of the cycle and how it works in the 21st century. This is crucial if society is to be able to achieve global solutions to the world’s water crisis.

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“The water cycle diagram is a central icon of hydro science, but misrepresenting the ways in which humans have influenced this cycle diminishes our awareness of the looming global water crisis,” says Professor David Hannah, UNESCO Chair in Water Sciences at the University of Birmingham.

“By leaving out climate change, human consumption, and changes in land use we are, in effect, creating large gaps in understanding and perception among the public and also among some scientists.”

The new diagrams drawn up by the team show a more complex picture that includes elements such as meltwater from glaciers, flood damage caused by land use changes, pollution and sea level rises.

Professor Stefan Krause, Head of the Birmingham Water Council states: “For the first time, the new water cycle diagram adequately reflects the importance of not just quantities of water but also water quality and pollution as key criteria for assessing water resources.”

Professor Ben Abbott, from Brigham Young University, is lead author on the paper: “Every scientific diagram involves compromises and distortions, but what we found with the water cycle was widespread exclusion of a central concept. You can’t understand water in the 21st century without including humans.”

“Other scientific disciplines have done a good job depicting how humans now dominate many aspects of the Earth system. It’s hard to find a diagram of the carbon or nitrogen cycle that doesn’t show factories and fertilizers. However, our drawings of the water cycle are stuck in the 17th century.”

“Better drawings of the water cycle won’t solve the global water crisis on their own, but they could improve awareness of how local water use and climate change have global consequences.”

 

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