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.