April 16, 2001
TO: Editors, news directorsFROM: UW-Madison University Communications, (608) 262-3571RE: EARTH DAY STORY IDEAS
With Earth Day approaching Sunday, April 22, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison can offer fresh perspectives for your environmental coverage and describe current research that is helping better understand the environment or solve environmental problems.
Here are a few examples from scores of projects under way at the university:
PERSPECTIVES FROM THE ESA PRESIDENTCONTACT: Stephen Carpenter, (608) 262-8690, [email protected]
Stephen Carpenter, professor of limnology and zoology at UW-Madison, is the current president of the 7,600-member Ecological Society of America, one of the nation's most influential organizations in setting a course for sound ecological research and practice. Carpenter can offer perspectives on emerging priorities in ESA, such as promoting a stronger international approach to solving large-scale ecological problems that do not follow national boundaries. Those include issues such a global climate change, ozone depletion, habitat destruction, ecosystem management and restoration, extinction and loss of biodiversity.
Carpenter's research focus is on biocomplexity, which is helping build a greater understanding of how living things at all levels interact with their environment. His research just received a $3 million National Science Foundation grant to analyze the human impact on a suite of 50 lakes in northern Wisconsin's Vilas and Oneida counties. The study will look at forestry and recreational development, fish production, shoreline vegetation and habitat, and exotic species problems in lakes. The goal will be to measure how human use of lakes affects the overall health of the ecosystem. Carpenter was named president last fall. The group will hold its annual meeting in Madison this August.
GIVING RARE GRASSLAND BIRDS A BOOSTCONTACTS: Stan Temple, (608) 263-6827, [email protected]; and Dan Undersander, (608) 263-3050, [email protected]
More than 40 bird species breed in Wisconsin's hayfields, prairies and pastures. From 1960 to 1990, populations of birds such as meadowlarks, savannah sparrows, upland sandpipers and bobolinks experienced the steepest decline of any group of birds in North America. Some of the decline in the Midwest can be traced to farmers who converted grasslands to corn and soybean fields. But the recent widespread adoption of rotational grazing in America's Dairyland is giving Wisconsin grassland birds a second chance. With rotational grazing, pastures are divided into paddocks and graziers let cows graze one paddock at a time for two days or less before moving them to a fresh paddock. A team of agronomists and wildlife biologists with the UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has evaluated techniques that can favor grassland birds on these pastures. The researchers have identified bird-friendly practices that graziers can implement at little or no expense. The scientists found, for example, that moving cows from paddock to paddock frequently, leaving more grass after grazing a paddock or protecting a couple of paddocks during the birds' nesting season all increase the nesting success of grassland birds on these pastures.
LINKS BETWEEN BOREAL WILDFIRES AND GLOBAL WARMINGCONTACT: Tom Gower (608) 262-0532, [email protected]
The boreal forest, much of which grows atop a peat layer rich in carbon, stretches across parts of three continents. This forest contains more carbon in the soil than any other forest biome, and plays an important role in the global carbon cycle. Wildfires burn millions of acres of boreal forest every year and fire frequency has increased over the last several decades because of the warmer climate. "We don't fully understand the carbon dynamics in forests of different ages in this region and how fires affect carbon budgets," says UW-Madison forest ecologist Tom Gower. But he and his colleagues calculated that a 1987 fire that burned 3.2 million acres in China released 2 to 5 percent of the total worldwide carbon dioxide emissions that year. Gower now is coordinating a study with researchers from four other institutions to measure carbon exchange in forest stands that burned at different times in Northern Manitoba. They'll also use remote sensing to assess the frequency and extent of fires and employ computer models to predict whether the ecosystem will be absorbing or releasing carbon as temperatures increase. The study will help policymakers understand the effects of global warming on fire frequency, and in turn, the effects of increased fire frequency on carbon dioxide exchange between boreal forests and the atmosphere. "Historically, we've thought of this ecosystem as a region that stores carbon," says Gower. "But if fires become more frequent, all bets are off."
CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL A WIN-WIN FOR ENVIRONMENTCONTACTS: Craig Benson, (608) 262-7242, [email protected]; Tuncer Edil (608) 262-3225, [email protected]
Craig Benson and Tuncer Edil, UW-Madison civil and environmental engineering professors, are involved in two major projects that are resulting in environmentally safe and cost-effective roadbed construction in Wisconsin. The engineers mixed fly ash, a powdery material that is created when coal is burned for fuel, into the moist soil to form a stiff substance. Because fly ash is a waste product that might be sent to landfills if not used, it's relatively cheap but also ecologically sound.
The soil stabilization research projects enable the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to build safer, stronger roads for travelers while providing foundry and power industries a beneficial use for their byproducts. The Wisconsin projects are in Cross Plains and on Highway 60 near Lodi.
A LOCAL TEST BED FOR REDUCING URBAN WATER POLLUTIONCONTACT: Kenneth Potter, (608) 262-0040, [email protected]
UW-Madison's Kenneth Potter, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Richard Lathrop, a researcher in the center for Limnology, are leading a study of how urbanization is affecting ground water quality, focused on the North Fork of the Pheasant Branch Conservancy near Madison. An interdisciplinary research team, including Lathrop, Potter and other scientists from UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resource, hopes to learn about these effects and develop analytical and modeling tools to minimize them. The team will consider a range of urban development issues, including storm runoff, groundwater depletion, wastewater treatment, nuisance algae growth and wetland degradation. The team also is evaluating alternative management practices and urbanization patterns. In addition, researchers are examining the social and political opportunities for, and constraints on, effective management.# # #
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