Nathan Wilson and EOL Team Join Ecosystems Staff
Nathan Wilson, Associate Research Scientist, and the biodiversity informatics and web development team working on the Encyclopedia of Life have joined the Ecosystems Center. EOL has been at MBL since 2007. MBL was one of the five founding institutions that launched this ambitious attempt to create a web page for every species of life on [...]
Chris Neill Named New Director of Ecosystems Center
Senior Scientist Christopher Neill has been named director of the Ecosystems Center. Chris is also the Phyllis and Charles M. Rosenthal Director of the Brown-MBL Partnership and director of the Brown-MBL Graduate Program in Biological and Environmental Sciences. He received a B.S. from Cornell University, and a M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts [...]
Reaching New Heights To Measure CO2
Featured Article: Reaching New Heights To Measure CO2 Led by senior scientist Anne Giblin and postdoctoral scientist Inke Forbrich, Ecosystems Center scientists have built a 40-foot instrumentation tower at the Plum Island Long Term Ecological Research site in northern Massachusetts to allow them to make year-round measurements of net ecosystem carbon exchange. The particular site [...]
Nutrients Causing Salt Marshes to Disintegrate
A long-term, large-scale study by Ecosystems Center scientists of salt marsh landscapes in an undeveloped coastline section of the Plum Island Estuary in Massachusetts has shown that nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus can cause salt-marsh loss. Center scientists Linda Deegan, David Johnson and Bruce Peterson and four other scientists are authors of an article [...]
2011 Ecosystems Center Annual Report: Read It On-Line
The 2011 Ecosystems Center Annual Report features stories on nutrient pollution, climate warming and fisheries. Ed Rastetter writes about the models of nutrient cycling that he has developed, which he uses to predict the effects of thermokarst scars in the Arctic, as shown in the photo (on left). Thermokarst occurs when permafrost thaws and the [...]
Tales of Young Scientists in the Salt Marsh
Greenheads, Dragonflies, Snails, and Tales of Young Scientists in the Salt Marsh If you pay attention to a New England salt marsh in the summer you can see emergence. The greenhead that emerges from the grass. The dragonfly that emerges from the pond. The snail that emerges from the flooding waters. In Plum Island, if [...]