WVU Students: Justin Mathias & Nanette Raczka

From an Article of WVU Newswire, September 20, 2017

MORGANTOWN, W. Va.—Biology students at West Virginia University are studying the impact of climate change on the forests of the Appalachian Mountains.

Justin Mathias and Nanette Raczka, Ph.D. students in the Department of Biology, have received Smithsonian Center for Tropical Forest Science-ForestGEO grants to support their research.

“These grants are prestigious and very competitive to get,” said Richard Thomas, chair of the Department of Biology. “It is very unusual that one university gets more than one in a year.”

Mathias is using his $13,000 grant to investigate changes in tree growth in the Appalachian Mountains over time and identify the drivers of those physiological changes. He will use a site in Front Royal, Virginia, that is part of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s ForestGEO network.

“Trees can’t get up and move if they become stressed by their environment. They just deal with it in some way,” Mathias said. “They are telling us a story; we just have to figure out what that story is.”

By studying stable isotopes and tree rings, Mathias will identify the elements that comprise the trees, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen or sulfur, to better understand their physiology.

“Each of those different elements tell you something different about how the tree is functioning. When a tree adds on wood, the carbon that it gets to form biomass comes from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Given that, at least in the forests around the Appalachian Mountains, you have a growth ring every single year added on,” Mathias said. “It’s a really neat way to retrospectively examine both the physiology and the environment the tree is in, in a given time period.”

Through her $7,000 grant, Raczka will incubate soil from the same ForestGEO network plot to study the complexities of leaf litter. Using a technique called Quantitative Stable Isotope Probing, she will examine how soil microbes process carbon from leaf litter.

“This is a new technique, but it’s really useful because we can measure the amount of leaf litter that’s incorporated into the microbial biomass. We can see what microbes, whether they are fungi or bacteria in the soil, incorporate what type of leaf litter,” Rackza said. “This is really cool because it’s a critical step in understanding how carbon is stored in the soil and how it’s utilized from the inputs of the tree and the leaf litter to what stays in the soil or what is respired.”

Raczka learned qSIP from her research experience in Ember Morrissey’s lab, an assistant professor of environmental microbiology in WVU’s Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design. She is applying the technique to her research with Assistant Professor of Forest Ecology and Ecosystems Modeling Eddie Brzostek, which focuses on below-ground interactions and potential responses to global change.

“It’s a great partnership with her because I can learn this molecular technique that’s new to us to incorporate something that we do in our lab,” Raczka said. “The interaction with the graduate students and the professors here has been the best part of my WVU experience so far. To be able to learn new techniques in different labs is a really great opportunity, and I love the cross-disciplinary collaboration.”

-WVU-

Burnham Tree Farm in SW Penna.

Blaming Climate Change for Pests in PA Forests

From the Allegheny Front (Environmental Radio), Pittsburgh, August 7, 2014

By some estimates, forests can absorb 24 percent of man-made carbon dioxide emissions a year. To get those climate benefits, many experts say forests need to be well-managed—against droughts, bugs and invasive plants. But climate change is making these problems worse.

John Burnham’s tree farm is in southwest Pennsylvania. He’s growing American Chestnuts, to see if a hybrid of the endangered tree can survive.

Burnham also has a 100-year-old stand of yellow poplar that’s ready to be cut and sold. “I probably get a letter or postcard every six months by someone who wants to help me manage the timber,” Burnham says. “Basically, they want to cut the trees.”

Burnham worries that if he cuts the poplars, the land will be overtaken by invasives, weeds like the Asian ailanthus, also known as tree of heaven, known for its quick growth and foul smell. “I think we would lose control of the next woods that’s there, and it might be centuries before we would get back to a woods that we would be pleased with,” he says. Burnham is concerned that if invasives take over, it could harm the native birds, bees and bats.

Tom Martin is president of the American Forest Foundation, which advocates for sustainable family woodlands. “Used to be, if you owned land, and you let nature take its course, you’d probably get all those wonderful things you wanted in terms of wildlife, water,” Martin says. “These days, though, climate change, pests and pathogens, bugs and disease, are really taking a toll on your forests. So unless you’re actively paying attention, you can lose what you love.”

In recent years, tree farms in the Pennsylvania region have suffered from an increase in invasive plants and bugs. In the south, devastating tornadoes have knocked down large swaths of timber, and out west droughts have been tough on woodlands.

Martin says these problems are getting worse. “Perfect example is the mountain pine beetle. We’ve had it for a very, very long time in the United States. It’s an endemic beetle, I don’t know when it first came here,” he says.

Martin says the mountain pine beetle is currently destroying virtually all of the lodgepole pine in parts of Colorado and Wyoming. “Why? What’s suddenly changed that it’s gone from a nuisance to a disaster?” Martin asks.

He blames climate change. “What’s changed is there aren’t the number of extremely cold days in the winter in row that knocks back their population. It just isn’t happening anymore. So that pine beetle which used to do nuisance level damage suddenly is doing massive damage to a whole species of trees there and is now moving into the black hills and hitting ponderosa pine.”

Those warming temperatures are also benefitting some unwanted plant species, says Lewis Ziska, a researcher with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He has a book coming out about how plants react to rising temperatures and levels of carbon dioxide.

“In nine of the ten field studies, all of them show that as you change the environment, specifically as you add more C02 or a warmer temperature, it’s the invasive species that respond,” Ziska says. “And that has huge ramifications.” Ziska says research finds that invasives, such as poison ivy and ragweed, thrive under higher temperatures and levels of carbon dioxide.

It’s James Finley’s job to talk with large landowners about this and other issues relating to climate change. Finley is a professor of forest resources at Penn State University. He says the more native trees and other species that survive, the more forests will be useful in sequestering carbon dioxide and reducing the impacts of climate change.

But he says many landowners are similar to John Burnham—they’re doubtful about climate change. “Can I say global climate change to you? Probably not and keep you in touch with where I am,” he says. “But I can at least begin to point you toward making decisions toward a healthy ecosystem, which is going to be more resilient. And so I’m asking you to play off the idea of stewardship, rather than the idea of global climate change.”

And that’s how John Burnham thinks about it—he’s doing what he thinks is best for his trees and ecosystem of his property—and it’s fine with him if that benefits the climate.