News + Events

ACRC postdoc Gavin McNicol will present an overview of recent work by the Coastal Rainforest Margins Research Network at the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks today, Thursday, July 19th 2018.

The Coastal Rainforest Margins Research Network (CRMRN) is currently accepting applications for the Scientist Exchange Program (SEP). The goals of this exchange program are to facilitate new collaborations between scientists; build new skills in field, laboratory, or statistical techniques; and assist with production of a deliverable product of the collaboration (e.g., manuscripts, data sets, research proposals). Continue reading “Scientist Exchange Program now accepting applications” →

In any region-spanning collaborative effort, using (as-much-as-possible) unbiased methods is of course desirable.

Check out the recent paper by Terando et al. It’s open access, available here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.3499/epdf

They experimentally compared 11 different sensor brand and shield combinations to weather station data, and found that quite a few methods had a positive bias. It’s not something we haven’t known is a danger, but this is a nice way to standardize methods with some experimental backing behind it.

Applications are now closed.

During this second workshop we will bring together a select group of oceanographers, biogeochemists, biologists, modellers and others interested in processes occurring at the land-sea interface in temperate regions. Although the workshop will focus heavily on the Pacific Coast, our findings are expected to have applications to temperate coastal rainforest domains globally. Continue reading “Workshop 2: Marine-terrestrial Interactions in the Coastal Temperate Rainforest Domain” →

A brief write-up of our workshop in February is now online at Eos, AGU’s news magazine.

Check out the nice blog post and video from Hakai describing their super cool remote stream flow measuring system on Calvert Island.

The longest running ecological plot network in the world looking at succession (1916-present) is in Glacier Bay, and now all available photographs have been compiled.  They show a plant community evolving, from mostly bare rock to a variety of current states – spruce, alder, and willow, very different endpoints and something apparently unique to this portion of the bay.  For more information, higher resolution, and some data, see brianbuma.com/

A new map of both the range and decline of yellow-cedar has been published in Global Change Biology with help from researchers in Alaska, BC, and Washington.  The high resolution range map stretches from northern California to southcentral Alaska, from sea level in the north to treeline in the south.  The decline, now quantified at ~400,000 ha (about 7-8% of the total range area), covers southeast Alaska and central coastal BC, down to about 50 degrees north.  It is primarily located in areas where the mean winter temperature is between -2 and +2 degrees C, as anticipated.  The future climate of the region is expected to warm to that threshold by 2070 in most locations.  However, there are a few places above that threshold where cedar is apparently healthy, probably due to a lack of cold winters to trigger the decline when there is no snow on the ground like the outside of Vancouver Island.  How representative these sites are of the population at large needs to be further quantified.  Next steps include a predictive model of decline and comparison of the decline maps to other sources of mortality data.

Buma B, Hennon PE, Harrington CA, Popkin JR, Krapek J, Lamb M, Oakes LE, Saunders SC, Zeglen S.  Emerging broad-scale mortality driven by climate warming and loss of snowpack.  Global Change Biology.  In press.

New range layer of yellow-cedar and observed mortality.  Insets show detail at extreme range edge.   A:  Northern California and southern/eastern Oregon (red box).  B:  Prince William Sound and Icy Bay.  Inset arrows show small, disjunct populations.