Dr. Phil Robertson, MSU Distinguished Professor of Crop and Soil Science at KBS, accepted a Distinguished Scientist Award from the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) on behalf of the LTER Network.  Dr. Robertson is the Chair of the LTER Science Council and Executive Board and the Principal Investigator for the LTER site at the Kellogg Biological Station; he accepted the award in Washington, D.C. on May 18, 2010.

The LTER Network, which was founded in 1980 by the National Science Foundation (NSF), has significantly contributed to ecological research, specifically the long-term effects of environmental change on ecosystems.  The LTER is comprised of 26 sites around the world, all studying long-term ecological change.  The LTER site at KBS studies field crop ecosystems; KBS joined the LTER Network in 1988.

The Distinguished Scientist Award recognizes the LTER’s unique role in studying ecosystems and its important contributions to the study of ecology.  For more information about the award ceremony, please see www.lternet.edu/news/Article285.html.

The Ecological Society of America (ESA) has released several Reports on Biofuels and Sustainability.  One of the papers, Growing Plants for Fuel: Predicting Effects on Water, Soil and the Atmosphere, was co-authored by two KBS faculty members, Dr. Phil Robertson and Dr. Steve Hamilton.

These reports, which were reviewed by an Advisory Committee, are based upon scientific manuscripts initially presented at the Conference on the Ecological Dimension of Biofuels in Washington, D.C., on March 10, 2008. The conference was hosted by the Ecological Society of America and sponsored by a consortium of other scientific organizations, nongovernmental organizations, federal agencies, and the private sector.

Phil Robertson, chairperson of the National Science Foundation’s Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) Network and University Distinguished Professor of crop and soil sciences, organized and moderated a session titled “Integrated Science for Society and the Environment.”

The goal of the symposium was to discuss LTER’s Integrative Science for Society and Environment (ISSE) framework, which was developed exactly with these kinds of issues in mind.

The LTER Network is composed of 26 NSF-funded sites which conduct basic research in ecology and environmental science. MSU hosts one of the sites at its W.K. Kellogg Biological Station.

The ISSE framework developed by LTER scientists seeks to understand societal and environmental links in ecosystems as varied as arctic tundra, eastern forests, deserts, croplands and cities. The marine, urban, and rangeland studies featured in the symposium demonstrated the value of an integrated, long term, comparative research program in socio-ecological research, and point to new policy options for managing environmental change.

Robertson noted that environmental research in the United States and elsewhere has traditionally been conducted in separate spheres with few formal interactions. In part, he said, this is due to the absence of a unifying framework that provides the potential to understand interactions and feedbacks.

“In particular, new frameworks are needed to help us understand how humans perceive the critical services provided by ecosystems, how these perceptions change behavior and institutions, and how behavioral and institutional change in turn feeds back to affect ecosystems and their ability to deliver future services.”

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This news article originally appeared at MSU News; Contact: Tom Oswald, University Relations.

KBS research was recently highlighted as an outstanding example of environmental monitoring in the prestigous journal Science. The review article, titled "Monitoring Earth's Critical Zone," used KBS as an example of how to measure changes in greenhouse gas emissions:

“More than half of Earth's terrestrial surface is now plowed, pastured, fertilized, irrigated, drained, fumigated, bulldozed, compacted, eroded, reconstructed, manured, mined, logged, orconverted to new uses. These activities have long-lasting effects on life-sustaining processes of the near-surface environment, recently termed Earth's "critical zone."...

A notable example of how monitoring can quantify land-management’s control over emissions of the greenhouse gases CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide is found at the Kellogg Biological Station’s Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) in Michigan. Decades of data from Kellogg’s permanent field plots indicate that substantial fractions of greenhouse emissions from agriculture and forestry can be mitigated by land management strategies. This landmark study…will likely be instrumental in controlling agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.”

Kathleen, an LTER technician, is shown here collecting gas samples at the LTER main experiment. So far this year, lab technicians have collected gas samples 15 times from the experiment.

For more information about LTER research click here!

Full Citation:

Monitoring Earth's Critical Zone. Daniel deB. Richter, Jr. and Megan L. Mobley.  Science 20 November 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5956, pp. 1067 - 1068
DOI: 10.1126/science.1179117