Clark Lab

The timing of the first leaves on trees and plants can make or break an agricultural season. Too early, and the leaves might be blasted by the last frost. Too late and they miss out on maximizing the growing season.

But as climate change brings warmer-than-usual winters to the U.S., the plants may be more vulnerable to imprecise timing, and the tools traditionally used by farmers and horticulturists to predict the season may be inadequate. [more]

In Red Orbit

Clark, J.S., J. Melillo, J. Mohan, and C. Salk. 2013. The seasonal timing of warming that controls onset of the growing season. Global Change Biology, in press.

 

Many climate studies have predicted that tree species will respond to global warming by migrating via seed dispersal to cooler climates. But a new study of 65 different species in 31 eastern states finds evidence of a different, unexpected response… [more]

When stomata are open, the trade-off between water loss through transpiration and CO₂ uptake via photosynthesis is a result of the evolutionary history of land plants from green algae… [more]

 

From the announcement: I am pleased to announce this year’s winner of the Dean’s Award for best PhD student manuscript:

Denis Valle for his paper: Conservation Efforts May Increase Malaria Burden in the Brazilian Amazon, in PLOS ONE Volume 8, issue 3.  Denis will receive an award of $3,000 for his paper.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awards a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DDIG) to Kai Zhu for support of the project entitled “DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Forest climate requirements change through species life history.” This award is effective May 1 , 2013 and expires April 30, 2014. [more]

Rapp et al. paper in Ecology: “Populations within species are generally assumed to be less productive at colder temperatures, but this study demonstrates that this assumption may not hold in tropical forests.” [more]