Workshop: Respiration Regimes in River Networks: A cross-biome perspective
September 18-20, Ovronnaz, Switzerland. 
Support: NSF Macrosystems, Swiss National Foundation
 
Organizers:     Jim Heffernan (james.heffernan@duke.edu)
Tom Battin (tom.battin@epfl.ch)
 
Apply to attend and to receive financial support

Scientific goals: This workshop aims to advance our conceptual and technical understanding of the dynamics of respiration in streams.  Before, during, and after the workshop, working groups of participants will:

1. Develop a cross-system conceptual model of heterotrophic regimes
2. Empirically link the timing of respiration to spatial and temporal variation in OM inputs 
3. Evaluate temperature effects on respiration
4. Evaluate the frequency, duration, and extent of hypoxia in rivers
5. Integrate O2 and CO2 time series into statistical models of metabolism 
6. Review and develop approaches to link heterotrophic regimes to microbial and metazoan communities

Cost of attendance is travel and hotel; there is no registration fee. 
 
Funds from the US NSF are available to support attendance of:
-Junior Scientists (Undergrad through postdoc), especially members of under-represented groups
-Faculty at Minority Serving Institutions
-Potential collaborators and contributors to the StreamPULSE database
-Via the Swiss National Foundation, we can support attendance of non-US participants
 
To participate in the workshop, contact Jim Heffernan (james.heffernan@duke.edu) and Tom Battin (tom.battin@epfl.ch).
 

Dr. Anika Bratt has joined the Heffernan lab, with support from our NSF  project on the Future of the American Residential Macrosystem.  Anika will be trying to figure out whether and how yard-scale management scales up to whole regions.  She received her PhD in 2017 from the University of Minnesota under the direction of Dr. Jacques Finlay.

Congratulations to Dr. Anna Braswell and Dr. Megan Fork, who defended their dissertations in mid-November.  Anna is moving to Colorado for a post-doc at the Earth Lab and CU-Boulder, and Megan will be starting a post-doc at Umea University in Sweden.  Anna and Megan are the first PhD students to graduate from the Heffernan Lab, and we're very proud of them!  

We're hiring a post-doc on our Urban Macrosystems project.  More information here: Positions currently available

Jim Heffernan, Marco Marani, and Brad Murray, along with Matt Kirwan at the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences, have received a new grant to measure and model the spatial extent of coastal wetlands at the continental scale.  The basic idea is to extend our current understanding of salt marsh evolution up into watersheds, and explicitly link sediment delivery from the uplands with the internal estuarine processes that shape marsh distributions. This grant is based in large part on Anna Braswell's PhD research.

River Center PIs Emily Bernhardt, Brian McGlynn, and Jim Heffernan received a new grant to study the metabolic patterns of rivers at continental scales.  Press release here.

Some new publications from the lab:

Two papers from our macrosystems project on Urban Homogenization
Resident attitudes toward ecosystem services in lawns
The convergence of residential microclimates across US cities

A fun and important paper led by Matt Ross, with Emily Bernhardt and Martin Doyle:
The history and importance of design in ecology

Megan Fork published this review paper, which arose from a special session in which she presented her MS research:
The effects of dissolved organic matter in aquatic ecosystems

​Yikes! It has really been a long time since this page got updated.

Since our last post, a lot of things have happened.  First, some news about people in the lab:

In August, Cathy Chamberlin joined the lab as a new PhD student.  Cathy just submitted her first NSF Graduate Research Fellowship application.  

In October, Xiaoli Dong joined the lab as a new post-doc.  Xiaoli is working on spatial pattern formation in wetland landscapes, with a particular focus on the karst landscape of Big Cypress preserve. 

Megan Fork spent the summer studying the effects of urban runoff on reservoirs, through a GO! Fellowship from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  A local newscast did a brief story about Megan, which you can see here.

​Chelsea Clifford spent the summer characterizing the ecological structure of ditches throughout the coastal plain of North Carolina.

Anna Braswell spent the summer collecting sediment cores from wetlands along the NC coast.  

Jim Heffernan visited the University of Wyoming, where collaborator and former sabbatical visitor Bob Hall played host. He also spent a few days at a SESYNC workshop, trying to understand innovation in urban socio-ecosystems.  

I'll post other exciting news shortly.

We are pleased to announce that Cathy Chamberlin will join the Heffernan Lab in Fall of 2015 as a PhD student in the University Program in Ecology. Cathy graduated Summa Cum Laude from Yale University in 2012 with her BA in Chemistry. Her honors research addressed the use of geochemical proxies for paleoclimatology and paleoaltimetry, and was based on field work in New Zealand. After graduation, she worked in a molecular biology lab focused on circadian rhythms (and then came racing back to environmental science!) She has also taught English in Russia through a Fulbright fellowship.  Based on her outstanding accomplishments and potential, Cathy was awarded a James B. Duke Fellowship.  Congratulations Cathy and welcome aboard!

More good news on the funding front!  PhD student Anna Braswell has received support from NC Sea Grant to conduct a geospatial analysis of wetland distributions along the SE coast of the US.  Anna's work is focused on understanding how land-ocean links, coastal morphology, and marsh vegetation feedbacks influence the broad-scale distribution of salt marshes, and this more regionally focused award will allow us to develop some additional data analysis approaches. As part of the award, the NC Chapter of Student Wetland Scientists will be organizing a symposium about the drivers of marsh resilience and the selection of sites for ecological restoration.  Way to go Anna!