CTFS-SIGEO Colleagues Work Towards Real-time Automated Monitoring of Forests and Environmental Change

Workshop participants, back row: Ned Friedman (Arnold Arboretum), Jon Chappell (SAO), Carlos Corrada (UPR), Stuart Davies (CTFS-SIGEO), Christopher Thomas (Oregon State), Biff Bermingham (STRI), Cassidy Rankine (UAlberta), Jess Parker (SERC), Matteo Detto (CTFS-SIGEO), Bill Munger (Harvard), Evan DeLucia (UIllinois), Michael Schindlinger (Leslie), Frank Levinson, Rich Camili (WHOI), Larry Madin (WHOI); front row: David Kenfack (CTFS-SIGEO), Lewis Girod (MIT), Erin Kurten (CTFS-AA), Helene Muller-Landau, Lucy Hutyra (BU), Charlie Harvey (MIT), Scott Gallagher (WHOI).

On June 13-14, twenty-three engineers, environmental scientists and ecologists met at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University to discuss the potential for a standardized instrumentation platform for CTFS-SIGEO sites around the world. The proposed instrumentation platform would provide real-time data on tree growth and health, animal sounds and movements, and climatic and other environmental fluctuations. Real-time data of this sort will provide a powerful addition to how CTFS attempts to link fluctuations in physical and environmental conditions with forest change.

Frank Levinson opened the meeting with his vision for developing a forest ecology “tailplate” – a standardized infrastructure that individual investigators could depend on to easily replicate studies across sites.

Participants gave presentations on a wide variety of potential platform components (including meteorological sensors, automated dendrometer bands, eddy flux systems, cameras and hyperspectral sensors, sound recording equipment and associated analysis programs) and the scientific questions these would address. Participants from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) presented on similar instrumentation initiatives for oceanographic measurements, and relevant lessons for developing a terrestrial platform.

There was wide agreement that with recent technological advances, the time is right to develop and deploy such a standardized instrumentation platform for CTFS-SIGEO sites. Standardized, long-term measurements across CTFS-SIGEO sites would enable robust comparisons among sites, quantification of interannual variation, and better detection of any long-term change.

CTFS-SIGEO Program Manager Appointed: Liz Delaney

We are pleased to announce that Liz Delaney has joined the Center for Tropical Forest Science-Smithsonian Institution Global Earth Observatory (CTFS-SIGEO) as Program Manager for the network.

Liz joins CTFS after working at Earthwatch Institute as the Interim Director of Field Centers, and before that as Program Manager for Regional Climate Centers (part of the HSBC Climate Partnership). Before joining Earthwatch, Liz lived for five years in rural Costa Rica where she worked as a science teacher and curriculum developer at a bilingual environmental education center, and has previously worked as an environmental consultant for the EPA. Liz got her Master’s in Science Education from The George Washington University, and her undergraduate degree in Biology from Boston College. Liz is fluent in Spanish and enjoys traveling, running, spending time with her husband and daughter, and the outdoors. She will be based at the CTFS office at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.

CTFS-AA Program Assistant Appointed: Sara Lischynsky

We are pleased to announce that Sara Lischynsky has joined the Center for Tropical Forest Science-Arnold Arboretum (CTFS-AA) Asia Program to serve as Program Assistant.

Sara joins CTFS-AA following a position as Assistant to the Deans of Suffolk University’s College of Arts & Sciences, where she also pursued studies in graphic design. Originally from New York State, Sara earned her BA degree at Emerson College in Boston, studying publishing and communication.

She will be based at the CTFS office at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.

Arnold Arboretum’s Robert Cook retires after 21 years

Last month, Robert E. Cook retired as director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University after having led the institution for over two decades. The Arnold Arboretum’s involvement with CTFS goes back to the early 1980s when Steve Hubbell and Peter Ashton (then director of the Arboretum) agreed to replicate the BCI plot in Malaysia. Today the CTFS network comprises 34 plots around the world and represents a rich, exemplary tradition of collaborative science.

Bob Cook has played a significant role in sustaining and advancing CTFS research and training, particularly in tropical Asia. Under his directorship in 2003, the Arboretum joined the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in supporting CTFS’s core Asian research. That agreement was renewed in 2007 with the Arboretum furthering its commitment to CTFS research in Asia.

Bob has also been instrumental in involving CTFS in undergraduate and graduate education at Harvard and abroad. Through its annual Biodiversity of Borneo summer course and International Field Biology Course, CTFS exposes students to the remarkable biodiversity of the Asian tropics and introduces them to the complexities of conservation and forest management.

Plant science has benefited greatly from Bob’s long career in research and academic administration. In 1989, he came to the Arnold Arboretum from Cornell University, where he had been the director of Cornell Plantations and an associate professor of ecology and systematics. Prior to that he was an associate professor at Harvard. We appreciate his support and leadership over many years and wish him the very best in retirement.