Why should we care?

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Post by Jason McLachlan, University of Notre Dame Professor

On Friday, we had a film crew from a local natural history show “Outdoor Elements“ on campus to film a couple of segments on PalEON. I led a segment on the changes in vegetation from the era of European settlement to the present and Sam Pecoraro led a segment on tree-rings. The host and director, Evie Kirkwood, asked each of us to come up with some photogenic activities and to think about why the Outdoor Elements viewers should care about our work.

(1) The first part was easy. Jody and Zoe helped me pull together the settlement-era PLS survey data for the area that would later be the Notre Dame campus. Zoe and Jody overlaid the modern campus road system on top of the original survey map and the transition is striking. Back in 1829, when William Brookfield surveyed the area, Saint Joseph’s Lake and Saint Mary’s Lake are shown as a single lake (which was separated in the mid-1800s to reduce swampy lake margins). The creek draining this lake into the Saint Joseph River is now an underground culvert.

 

Resurveying the corner trees shows a transition to smaller trees in places that are now forested, and a transition to larger trees in open grown or ornamental settings. The broader settlement-era landscape includes long-gone features like the “Portage Prairie” along the canoe portage to the Kankakee River. Evie asked us if any of the original settlement-era trees still existed. The only plausible candidate we know of is this white oak on campus. It’s size and open grown form make it a plausible survivor, but it’s hollow, so we don’t really know if it was around when William Brookfield first passed by.

Meanwhile, Sam cored trees at the resurveyed PLS points for the camera. Sam cuts a rugged figure in his field gear (no picture available) and he is far more articulate than I am. Chelsea Merriman had earlier helped him prepare replicate cores for analysis, so, like Julia Child, Sam was able to instantly pull out sanded and counted tree-cores for the show.

(2) Getting our message across was much clumsier for me. Evie Kirkwood is a real pro and she made it as easy as possible for us, but academics are trained to be bad communicators, I felt really stumbly trying to get the magnificence of PalEON across in 7 minutes.

Here’s what I wish I’d said:

“We care about this for two reasons: First, we think we know our home, but what we think is permanent is transitional. Everyone hates to see changes in their town, or their neighborhood, or the landscape of their youth, but these things always change. Even when William Brookfield surveyed this township in 1829, it was changing, recovering from the French and Indian wars. (Everyone should read Richard White’s, “The Middle Ground”). PalEON shows us the pace and character of this change, so we can understand where we live.

Second, we know a lot about how the world will change moving forward, but not enough. The models we have for anticipating our impact on the atmosphere and the biosphere are stunningly clever and powerful. But they are also too simple (they are supposed to be simple). I’m not sure if we will ever provide the accurate forecasts that policymakers seek, but our best effort will combine these models with data on how ecosystems really change. That’s what PalEON does.”

Here’s what I actually said:

Actually, I don’t remember what I actually said. I was really nervous. What I was thinking was: “Am I supposed to look at Evie or the guy with the camera? Did I just stick my arm right in front of Zoe’s face? Shit. I forgot to mention the changing stem densities! Does this new haircut make my face look fat?”

Luckily for me, Evie is a good editor; we gave them a lot of good visuals; and Sam is a natural in front of the camera. Everyone says I didn’t look nervous and I made sense. We’ll see when the show hits the air in 2014.

PLS around Notre Dame

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Posted by Jody Peters

The crew at Notre Dame is in the process of entering PLS data for Indiana. Recently we focused on the area around Notre Dame and South Bend. Here is the area as depicted in the 1829 PLS survey, 13 years before Notre Dame’s founding.
It has been interesting to learn about the changes that have taken place around campus. While the major roads around Notre Dame (Angela, Douglas and Juniper) were originally based off the PLS survey, all three roads have had sections of them moved.


In the 1829 survey, the two lakes on campus were drawn as one. We aren’t sure if this is because the surveyor was in a hurry and didn’t take time to explore the lakes further or if he was surveying in the winter when the lakes were ice covered. But from historical documents at Notre Dame there are a number of references to two lakes, although the lakes water levels have been known to fluctuate and at some points were quite high making the area between the lakes quite swampy.
At the time of the PLS survey the Notre Dame area was dominated by oaks. But another tree found in the area that was of interest to the lab was the pepperage tree. The pepperage tree, or more commonly spelled, pepperidge is also known as sour gum, black gum or black tupelo. As a side note, the pepperidge tree is where Pepperidge Farms get their name (got to love those goldfish crackers)! To learn more about pepperidge trees, check out this great site. Keep up to date with ND’s data entry progress by clicking on Indiana map at our Settlement Vegetation Site.

 

PalEON2 Funded!

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We are proud to announce that we have 5 more years of NSF funding!

Although our team and goals have expanded, we are still an interdisciplinary team of paleoecologists, environmental statisticians and ecosystem modelers.  As with PalEON1 our aim is to gain a deeper understanding of past terrestrial ecosystem dynamics in response to global change drivers and to use this knowledge to improve long-term forecasting capabilities.

New research components that will be added in the next 5 years include:

1) statistical synthesis of paleoclimate and paleocharcoal data

2) regional-scale assimilation of data into ecosystem models

3) collection of new data at highly integrated proxy sites (HIPS) to support model improvement

4) expansion of PalEON into the Alaskan boreal forest

5) develop statistically informed methods for paleodata site selection

 

Simon Goring talks historic vegetation at IBS 2013

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PalEON postdoc Simon Goring recently presented his work with historic vegetation data in the US Midwest at the International Biogeography Society 2013 meeting in Miami, Florida.  His talk, “Estimating pre-settlement vegetation in the American Midwest: Exploring climate relationships and links to proxy data for robust data assimilation,” builds on Simon’s work to generate spatial data layers providing settlement-era forest composition, density, and biomass estimates  derived from US Public Land Survey data from the 1800’s.  You can check out Simon’s thoughts on the IBS conference on his blog, Down with Time, or view slides from his presentation on figshare here.

New publication out: On improving the communication between models and data

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PalEON PI Mike Dietze of Boston University is the lead author of “On improving the communication between models and data,” which highlights some of the tools and techniques used to facilitate the type of model-data syntheses at the core of the PalEON approach. The paper is currently available via early online viewing at Plant, Cell, & Environment.  Check it out here!

PalEON Members Invited to Speak at DIMACS Geological Data Fusion Workshop in January

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PalEON PI’s Chris Paciorek and Mike Dietze, along with PalEON participant Martin Tingley, are slated to speak at the upcoming “Workshop on geological data fusion: tackling the statistical challenges of interpreting past environmental change,” hosted by Rutgers University’s Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) on January 17-18, 2013.

If you are interested in attending the workshop, check out the Workshop Announcement on DIMACS website for more information.  Talks are by invitation only, but posters are welcome (abstracts due December 14, 2012).  If you’re interested in attending the workshop, you can find registration information here.  Pre-registration deadline is January 10, 2013.

Mike Dietze Talks PalEON at the NEON Annual Meeting

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PalEON PI Mike Dietze was invited to speak about his work on two NSF Macrosystems Biology projects at the NEON, Inc., Annual Membership Meeting held this week in Washington, DC.  His talk today, “A Tale of Two Macrosystems Biology Projects,” detailed the goals, progress, and plans of both PalEON and a second Macrosystems project on which Mike works, “Climate change impacts on forest biodiversity.”

Job Opening: Postdoctoral Fellowship in Ecological Statistics

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A postdoctoral fellowship in statistical methods applied to paleoecological problems is available based either at the University of Notre Dame or at the University of California, Berkeley. The postdoctoral fellow will lead the development of statistical models, based on spatial statistics, state space, and data assimilation methods, for the initiative, interacting with statisticians, paleoecologists, paleoclimatologists, and ecosystem modelers.

See the position advertisement for full details. Initial review of applications begins October 21, 2012, and will continue until filled.