In the News: Ecosystems Center Scientists Featured in National Media

2011:
BBC News, Huge Arctic fire hints at new climate clue, reports on research published in the July 28 issue of Nature on carbon loss and the 2007 fires on the Arctic tundra. Authors are Gus Shaver of the Ecosystems Center, lead author Michelle Mack of University of Florida and their colleagues at the Arctic Long Term Ecological Research site at Toolik Lake, Alaska. See also Scientists report dramatic carbon loss from massive Arctic wildfire.
Mack, M.C., M. S. Bret-Harte, T. N. Hollingsworth, R. R. Jandt, E.A.G. Schuur, G.R. Shaver, and D. L. Verbyla. 2011. Carbon loss from an unprecedented Arctic tundra wildfire Nature 475: 493–496

Research at the TIDE project at Plum Island Sound, led by Ecosystems Center senior scientist Linda Deegan, has been highlighted by the National Science Foundation on its Science, Engineering & Education Innovation webpage, Human-Generated Nutrient Overloads Can Destroy Coastal Wetlands

2010:
MBL Science Journalism Fellow Jennifer Bogo has a story, Life at an Antarctic Outpost, published December 8 in Popular Mechanics. It has also been picked up by Science 360, the National Science Foundation web site. Bogo was with Chris Neill and two other journalists, also fellows in the MBL Science Journalism Program, who were with scientists at the Palmer Station Long Term Ecological Research site as they study the effects of environmental change on the Antarctic peninsula. Neill and the journalists posted to their blog during their two-week trip in November.

Gretchen Weber, 2010 MBL science journalist, reports on "The Arctic's Effect on California" for Climate Watch on KQED, Northern California's public radio station.

MBL Science Journalism Program Fellows are presently in the Arctic for two weeks with Ecosystems scientist Chris Neill and research assistant Rich McHorney. They are spending time at the Long Term Ecological Research site at Toolik Lake, Alaska, with MBL scientists and others who study the ecology of the surrounding tundra, streams and lakes. Among recent postings are journalists Chelsea Wald's blog for Scientific American and Gretchen Weber's postings to WQED's Climate Watch. The Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which manages the Toolik Lake site, has a media resources web page with background information and recent work by the journalists.

Hugh Ducklow is featured in the current issue of Cape Cod Life as an "Environmental Pioneer." Writer Mindy Todd highlights Ducklow's climate change research at Antarctica's Palmer Station Long Term Ecological Research site, where scientists have found that the average midwinter temperature has increased by 11 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950.

An Arctic With Fire in the April 21 issue of U.S. News and World Report quotes Gus Shaver about the unusual number of Arctic wildfires and their implications for climate change.

Well-known Alaskan author Bill Sherwonit reports on tundra fires in Alaska and research being conducted by Ecosystems Center scientists and others in Yale Environment 360: Arctic Tundra is Being Lost As Far North Quickly Warms.

WCAI, the Cape and Islands NPR station, featured interviews on its show The Point with Ecosystems Center scientists Hugh Ducklow and Christopher Neill on climate-caused changes to the polar ecosystems. Ducklow spoke live from the Palmer Station Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in Antarctica and Neill was in the Woods Hole radio studio.

2009:

Palmer Station Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in Antarctica is featured in the December 21 issue of The New Yorker. The Ice Retreat: Global warming and the Adélie penguin, by Fen Montaigne, reports the research of William Fraser and quotes Hugh Ducklow, Ecosystems Center director and Palmer LTER principal investigator. Additional information is available on The New Yorker's audio slideshow and podcast.

Gus Shaver, senior scientist, and Adrian Rocha, postdoctoral scientist, are featured in September 2's Nature in Arctic Ecology: Tundra's Burning, by Jane Qiu, one of the MBL's Logan Science Journalism Program (SJP) Fellows who spent two weeks at the Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research site at Toolik Lake, Alaska.

Other stories on climate change research by the SJP fellows are:Dakota Digest, by Charles Michael Ray of South Dakota Public Broadcasting, and Scientists at Toolik Field Station Investigate a Warming Arctic in the Newark (NJ) Star Ledger by Jennifer Weiss. British journalist Tracey Logan writes in New Scientist about tundra fire on the North Slope: Alaska's biggest tundra fire sparks climate warning. While at the station, the journalists blogged about their daily experiences.

Complete list of 2009 Science Journalism Program articles, broadcasts and blogs.

Red Flag Raised on Climate Change in the Cape Cod Times was one of many news stories that featured Jerry Melillo as he presented highlights from Global Climate Change: Its Impacts in the United States.

Hugh Ducklow is featured in a podcast called Penguins in the Hot Seat. It was produced for the Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence by Ari Shapiro of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution


2008:

Arctic research by Anne Giblin, senior scientist at the Ecosystems Center, was featured in an article by Richard Morgan in the New York Times on September 2, 2008, "Beyond Carbon: Scientists Worry About Nitrogen’s Effects." Also featured in the article was James Galloway of University of Virginia, a visiting scientist at the Ecosystems Center this year.

Nancy Cohen of Connecticut Public Radio’s Environmental Reporting Initiative interviewed Ecosystems Center senior scientists and other Toolik LTER scientists for five radio spots:

Stories from the Toolik station also appeared in the Kansas City Star, Raleigh News and Observer and Sacramento Bee.

“Scientists Worry as Once Frozen Tundra Thaws in Alaska”
Scott Canon
Kansas City Star

Arctic Lakes Show Warming: UNCG Researcher Studies Melting Permafrost”
Wade Rawlins
Raleigh News & Observer

Scientists at Arctic Research Station Take Pulse of the Warming Earth”
Carrie Peyton Dahlberg
Sacramento Bee

Other reporters posted their reports on arctic research to blogs.

Jim Metzner of NPR’s Pulse of the Planet Science Diary, who was part of a previous MBL Science Journalism group, interviewed Heidi Golden, research assistant for Linda Deegan, also a principal investigator on the Arctic LTER project. In interviews, Ms. Golden describes her team’s study of Arctic grayling in the Kuparuk River. These scientists hope that their studies of yearly fish population changes will help them understand effects of climate change.

Pulse of the Plant interviews are available on the web site (daily programs, June 2008)