CTFS-SIGEO is a global network of forest research plots committed to the study of tropical and temperate forest function and diversity. The multi-institutional network includes plots across the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe, with a strong focus on tropical regions. Ecologists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute established the first forest dynamics plot on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal in 1980.

Image left: Daniel Johnson, a biology graduate student at Indiana University, measures the diameter of a white ash tree in the University’s Lilly-Dickey Woods. The 550-acre woods were recently added to CTFS-SIGEO’s global network of forest research plots. (Photo by F. Collin Hobbs)

Stuart J. Davies, CTFS-SIGEO director and senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, will make the move along with David Kenfack, CTFS-SIGEO Africa Program coordinator. Davies sees the need for increased presence at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. as the network continues to build partnerships within different Smithsonian units.

The scale and intensity of the CTFS-SIGEO research program remains unprecedented in forest science. Scientists monitor the growth and survival of about 4.5 million trees of approximately 8,500 species in 21 different countries. The work aims to increase the scientific understanding of forest ecosystems, guide sustainable forest management and natural-resource policy, monitor the impacts of climate change, and build capacity in forest science. Most recently CTFS-SIGEO added the Lilly-Dickey Woods–a 550-acre forest in Brown County Indiana that is a research and teaching preserve for Indiana University–to its network of forest research plots.

Because of its extensive biological monitoring, unique databases, and the expertise of its partners, CTFS-SIGEO enhances society’s ability to evaluate and respond to the impacts of global climate change. Monitoring so many forest plots at once is providing a comprehensive, yet locally detailed perspective on how the world’s forests are being transformed by global change.  Research on tropical forest dynamics continues, but is joined by new initiatives studying carbon fluxes, temperate forests, ecosystem services, and biodiversity. CTFS-SIGEO and its many institutional partners are leveraging huge intellectual horsepower to transform our understanding of forest-ecosystem structure and function. The network has been so successful that the Smithsonian is now planning to extend its system of earth observatories to the near shore marine realm. –Source: The Plant Press, newsletter of the Department of Botany, National Museum of Natural History.

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Jonathan Thompson is Research Ecologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Research Associate at the Harvard Forest, and lead author on the paper which appeared in the journal Ecological Applications in late 2011. “The rebounding forests of New England provide a tremendous public benefit by storing carbon that would otherwise contribute to climate change,” said Thompson. To put these findings into context he adds, “In Massachusetts, forests capture approximately 2.3 million metric tons of carbon each year. That’s equal to the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from the energy used by one million American homes annually.” He and his coauthors were able to estimate the extent to which development may chip away at that carbon sink, using an uncommon collection of long-term data and a distinct form of research known as scenario science.

Image right: From this 71-foot eddy-flux tower in a 200-year-old hemlock forest, Harvard Forest scientists have measured carbon dynamics and other ecosystem processes for more than 20 years as part of the Long-Term Ecological Research program. Located in a 35-hectare Smithsonian Global Earth Observatory plot and part of the core measurements for the National Ecological Observatory Network, this tower is a focal point for studies of the eastern hemlock tree and its impending demise from the invasive hemlock wolly adelgid, as well as phenology studies of succeeding hardwoods.
(Photos by David Foster)

For more than 30 years, scientists at the Harvard Forest have scaled towers into the forest canopy and measured the trunks of trees to track how much carbon is stored or lost from the woods each year. This treasure trove of data is part of the national Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network, which is celebrating more than three decades of research this month. This important milestone is marked by six new papers released today in a special issue of the journal BioScience. The forest carbon research is one example of participatory scenario science — a growing trend in ecology featured in a paper by Thompson, David Foster, Director of the Harvard Forest, and their colleagues in the BioScience issue.

Image left: Summer Research Program students monitor soil respiration of decaying wood in a large study comparing carbon, water, and energy fluxes between harvested and unharvested sites.

Harvard Forest is one of four LTER sites in the northeastern U.S. and was awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to join the Network in 1988. David Foster coauthored the Ecological Applications paper of 2011 and co-edited the new BioScience special issue. He notes, “With three decades of data meticulously collected as part of the LTER Network, we have reached a crucial transition where we are now able to tackle major environmental challenges, such as the fate of forest carbon, across large landscapes.”

Foster adds, “Over the last two centuries, forests have stored more carbon with each passing year in many parts of New England, but the turning point may be in sight for Massachusetts and other urbanizing landscapes if recent development trends continue.” But that’s not the end of the story for Foster: “The good news is that forests are resilient and history is not necessarily destiny. Our research makes a compelling case for expanding support for forestland protection and for the efforts of private landowners to keep their land forested. It reminds us that forests provide important infrastructure that we should invest in, just as we do major civil works projects.”

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The rate of new marine invasions along U.S. coasts has risen sharply in recent decades due to human-aided introductions, often unintentional. Organisms can attach directly to the hulls of ships or be taken up and transported in ballast water (water used by large ships to provide stability and trim during sailing). They can also be introduced with imports of seafood, bait and packing materials. In addition, some species have been deliberately introduced to create new fisheries, though this practice is now very rare. As trade and globalization have increased, so has the opportunity for invasions.

No part of the country is untouched by non-native species. Although most people recognize a few of the common and conspicuous invaders in nearby waters, the full scope of invasions that lurk beneath the water often go unnoticed.

Image left: Chinese mitten crab.

NEMESIS aims to provide comprehensive and synthetic information on hundreds of individual marine species in the continental United States. Created by SERC’s marine invasions lab, the database includes information on how and when invasions occurred, distribution maps and what is known about their impacts. For example, the tunicate Didemnum vexillum (commonly known as D. vex or “rock vomit”) has created serious problems on the West and East Coasts of the United States. This mat-like species grows rapidly and can completely cover aquaculture nets, shellfish beds and sensitive marine environments. The database also includes an interactive map of the U.S., where visitors can search for invaders impacting their own coastlines.

NEMESIS launched March 5 with tunicates, a group that includes the destructive rock vomit. Tunicates, also known as ascidians or sea squirts, are filter feeders that grow on hard surfaces such as docks, rocks or sandy marine sediments. Information for other groups of species will become publicly available over the next year as NEMESIS continues its rollout, starting with crabs, shrimp and crayfish.

NEMESIS was designed in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey. NEMESIS focuses on invasions in marine and estuarine waters, while the USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species database focuses on invasions in freshwater habitats of the U.S. The complementary databases were designed to be compatible, allowing for joint syntheses across marine and freshwater habitats in the U.S.

The NEMESIS database is a long-term and dynamic program that will continue to grow over time. Records are updated regularly as new species are discovered and new research becomes available. For more information on NEMESIS or recent updates, visit the NEMESIS home page and the NEMESIS Interactive Invasions Map.

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The tropical Eastern Pacific, spanning the area from Baja California to Ecuador, and including the Galapagos, is one of three great global centers of marine biodiversity. Until the 1990s there was no guide to the fish in this region. The iPhone app evolved from Fishes of the Tropical Eastern Pacific, a written guide published in 1994 by Gerald R. Allen, consultant for Conservation International, and D. Ross Robertson, Smithsonian staff scientist.

The book presented detailed descriptions of nearly 700 species and led to the first
Spanish-language guide in 1998. With funds from the Smithsonian Women’s Committee, Robertson created the Smithsonian’s first bilingual interactive field guide application, released as a compact disc in 2002 and on the Internet in 2008.

“Now, not only can you carry the means to identify almost 1300 species in your pocket, this application surpasses many of the currently available field guides in its ability to create and share lists that correspond to specific regions or field trips,” said Robertson. “We also made it portable: The information is all in your phone so you don’t need to be connected to a server to use it…important when you are out at sea.”

Image right: Ross Robertson.

Users can browse alphabetic lists by species and family, use identification keys and perform a combination search on name, location, shape, pattern and color characteristics to identify unknown fishes. The notebook module serves two functions: users can keep track of the species that they have recently seen and keep annotated lists of fish from different sites that are then organized in folders; they can also export lists by email.

Each species page includes common and scientific names, images of the species, a detailed description, key features used to distinguish it from other species and a map of its range in the Tropical Eastern Pacific. The information is also stored in the apps database, and can be used to search for a fish. A glossary of scientific terms makes the guide accessible to students and lay-people, and information about the extinction risk status (International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List) is available to resource managers and conservationists.

Find the guide by searching in the iTunes store for “fishes east pacific” or by following this link directly to the iTunes store.

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Roughly 10 percent of all plant species are orchids, making them the largest plant family on Earth. But habitat loss has rendered many threatened or endangered. This is partly due to their intimate relationship with the soil. Orchids depend entirely on microscopic fungi in the early stages of their lives. Without the nutrients orchids obtain by digesting these host fungi, their seeds often will not germinate and baby orchids will not grow. While researchers have known about the orchid-fungus relationship for years, very little is known about what the fungi need to survive.

Image right and below: Flowers (right) and leaves (below) of the orchid Goodyera pubescens, commonly known as the downy rattlesnake orchid, endangered in Florida. (Photos by Melissa McCormick/SERC)

Biologists based at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md., launched the first study to find out what helps the fungi flourish and what that means for orchids. Led by Melissa McCormick, the researchers looked at three orchid species, all endangered in one or more U.S. states. After planting orchid seeds in dozens of experimental plots, they also added particular host fungi needed by each orchid to half of the plots. Then they followed the fate of the orchids and fungi in six study sites: three in younger forests (50 to 70 years old) and three in older forests (120 to 150 years old).

Image right and below: Leaf (right)  and flowers (below) of Tipularia discolor, the cranefly orchid, endangered in New York and Massachusetts, and threatened in Michigan and Florida.

After four years they discovered orchid seeds germinated only where the fungi they needed were abundant—not merely present. In the case of one species, Liparis liliifolia (lily-leaved twayblade), seeds germinated only in plots where the team had added fungi. This suggests that this particular orchid could survive in many places, but the fungi they need do not exist in most areas of the forest.

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Image left: SERC scientist João Canning Clode observes a green porcelain crab in his laboratory at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

But what happens to these fair-weather travelers during a severe cold snap, such as the one that occurred in January 2010 across much of the southeastern and eastern United States? To investigate, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center scientist João Canning Clode and colleagues at the Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md., tested the cold-water tolerances of invasive green porcelain crabs (Petrolisthes armatus) in their laboratory. Crabs were collected in Georgia and brought to the lab where they were subjected to one of three temperature treatments. The first was a control treatment of constant moderate winter temperature. The second was treatment in which the temperature was dropped to mimic the cold snap of January 2010, and the third treatment consisted of the extreme cold temperatures of a severe winter.

Canning-Clode and his colleagues found that most of the crabs in the control treatment survived (83%), but many of the crabs in the second cold treatment (61%) and all of the crabs in the third extreme cold treatment (100%) died. Crabs that survived cold treatment number two were sluggish, possibly making them more susceptible to predation and impacting their ability to feed, the scientists determined.

The scientists determined that prolonged exposure to cold temperatures also may compromise the green porcelain crab’s ability to overcome cumulative cold events, such as the two other record cold snaps that occurred in February and March of 2010.

Image right: A green porcelain crab (Photo by Juan Antonio Baeza)

The loss of more than 60% of their population during each cold period might explain the recent dramatic decline of the green porcelain crab in Georgia in 2010, suggesting that extreme cold spells may limit or prevent the northward spread of this invasive species.

Several climate models used to predict how species will react to climate change in the next 100 years have projected a continued decline of global biodiversity and increased spread of introduced species. Many of these models focus on temperature increases, but few have evaluated the impact of severe weather like cold snaps, Canning-Clode and his colleagues write in a paper on their study recently published at PLoS ONE.

For Canning Clode “the core message of this paper is that yes, climate change is happening, but cold is also part of this change. We believe these periodic cold events will limit the range expansion of Petrolisthes armatus as well as other Caribbean creep species” –Monaca Noble, SERC

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Scientists from the University of Georgia, University of New Hampshire, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and University of Vermont studied populations of European green crab, Carcinus maenas. The species was introduced to the East Coast of North America twice, at both the upper and lower edges of its range. Their findings, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may help inform the control of invasive species and the conservation of imperiled native species.

Image right and below: Green crabs

“In New England, they’re worried,” said Jeb Byers, an associate professor at the UGA Odum School of Ecology and one of the paper’s authors. “These green crabs have been doing a number on native shellfish. They eat a lot of clams. And they’re a very cosmopolitan species—they’ve now spread all over, to places as far afield as the West Coast of the U.S. and South Africa.”

The European green crab was first detected in North America in New Jersey in the early 1800s, Byers said. It spread slowly north against the prevailing direction of ocean currents until it reached Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1964. That was the extent of its range along the East Coast until the 1990s, when populations suddenly appeared throughout the Canadian Maritime provinces.

Conservation biologist Joe Roman of the University of Vermont, another of the paper’s authors, determined that these new populations were genetically different from those established earlier. Analysis revealed that unlike the earlier arrivals, they were related to European green crabs found in the Baltic, suggesting a new introduction directly from Europe to Nova Scotia had taken place. Other authors of the paper include James M. Pringle of the University of New Hampshire and April M. H. Blakeslee of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

Understanding how the species spread could offer insights into how to control it.

“Our theory was that the old invasion spread as far as it could upstream before fighting the currents made it impossible to spread farther,” Byers said. “We suspected that the new invaders were successful essentially because of physics. Unlike their predecessors, they didn’t have to fight their way against the current to spread. They just had to disperse their larvae into the water column and let the current carry them south along the coast.”

The second crab invasion established in the Strait of Canso and Bras d’Or Lake in northern Nova Scotia, locations well suited to serve as large population retention zones. These zones anchor the crab population because they are not subject to the strong currents typical of the outer coast.

“If you look at the prevailing ocean currents in the area, you can see that these population retention zones are at the upstream edge of practically the entire distribution of the crabs,” Byers said. “Crab larvae enter the water column from there and drift south.”

Byers and his colleagues genetically sampled crab populations from New York to northern Nova Scotia from 1999 to 2007. They found that the northern crabs were making up a greater share of the crab population at each sampling site as time progressed. “The northern crabs were 20 percent more common within only a few generations,” Byers said.

They also found that areas not previously invaded by southern crabs were susceptible to invasion by northern crabs. “The currents were carrying the crab larvae downstream from the northern populations into areas that the crabs moving under their own power up from the south were unable to colonize,” he said.

The team’s findings could help target efforts to control invasive species and conserve native species in environments influenced by strong water or air currents.–Source: Odum School of Ecology, The University of Georgia

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The idea that the colder temperatures of high-latitude regions act as a natural barrier to invasive species is a misconception.

Image right: The European green crab, Carcinus maenas. (Photo by Hans Hillewaert)

“Environmental conditions along the coastline of Alaska and many other high-latitude areas would not prevent successful invasion of non-native marine species with distributions now restricted to lower latitudes,” the scientists write in a recent paper published in the conservation biogeography journal “Diversity and Distributions.”

The team, which includes Anson Hines, director of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center; Gregory Ruiz, head of the Center’s Marine Invasions Research Lab, and Portland State University ecologist Catherine de Rivera, base their predictions on a series of niche models they created for four taxonomically diverse marine species: the European green crab (Carcinus maenas), rough periwinkle (Littorina saxatilis), bay barnacle (Amphibalanus improvisus) and the sea squirt (Styela clava).

Image left: Sea squirt, Styela clava. (Photo courtesy Fisheries and Oceans Canada)

Using a wide range of scientific data detailing where each species is presently established around the globe—both in their natural and introduced ranges—the scientists created computer models projecting where else on Earth they might logically thrive. Much of the Pacific coast of Alaska came up as a strong match for each of the species. The geographic range of all four animals received a strong nudge northward in the models when higher temperatures predicted from climate change (a rise of between 1.5 and 7 degrees Celsius) were factored in.

The scientists point out that their study focuses on only four invasive species out of more than two hundred that have become established in the region adjacent to Alaska, from California to British Columbia. If more invasive species do move north into Alaska it will likely come through an increase in the frequency and intensity of introductions, the scientists write—namely on commercial ships and recreational vessels, through aquaculture, and through the live trade of animals as food, pets and bait.

Invasive species ride in the ballast water of oil tankers and some cargo ships. Cruise ships and cargo barges can carry invasive species attached to their hulls.

Image right: The shell of the rough periwinkle, Littorina saxatilis. (Photo Amy Benson, USGS)

Alaska has been spared so far from an influx of invasive species, the scientists say, because the magnitude of shipping and other human-mediated transfer mechanisms has been historically low. In recent years however, vessel traffic has increased considerably along the Alaskan coast. For example, more than 7,000 ships arrived to Alaskan waters in 2004 alone, discharging over 4 million metric tons of ballast water. Shipping and other human activities are projected to increase in this region, especially if climate change brings warmer temperatures.

The probability of invasions in Alaska is likely to increase with global warming even without the help of ballast water introductions, the scientists conclude. “On a global scale, the suitability of Alaskan waters is not unique, as other high-latitude areas also offer environmental match for these species,” the scientists write.

“The ranges of all four species have slowly been moving northward up the coast and they may spread further up the coast by ocean currents,” Catherine de Rivera says.

The article “Potential for high-latitude marine invasions along western North America,” authored by Catherine de Rivera, SERC ecologist Brian Steves, SERC ecologist Paul Fofonoff, Anson Hines and Greg Ruiz, appeared in the journal Diversity and Distributions.

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Image left: Joseph Henry

Spencer Fullerton Baird, the Smithsonian’s second secretary (1878-1887) was an avid naturalist, collector and a pioneer in museum collecting and display. Whereas Henry had envisioned the Smithsonian primarily as a research institute, Baird began to develop the Smithsonian into a national museum. Secretary Baird’s vision coincided with a growing sense of nationalism surrounding the celebration of the U.S. Centennial. By 1878 Congress had formally given responsibility for the U.S. National Museum to the Smithsonian Institution. During the Baird years, the Smithsonian became a showcase for the nation’s history, resources, and treasures.

Since  its founding 165 years ago, the Institution has expanded into the world’s largest museum and research complex, with 19 museums, the National Zoo and nine research facilities, including the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute.

This slide show highlights a number of historic photographs featuring a few of the many scientific researchers who have played a role in the Smithsonian’s long climb to scientific prominence.

(Click photo to advance)

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