Skip to Content
Report an accessibility problem

We started the semester off with a wildly successful All Scientist Meeting at ASU’s Skysong in January, and now somehow it is April. Graduation is around the corner and the annual Fleeing of Phoenix for the summer is imminent. Since I last checked in with the CAP LTER Community, a number of new and exciting things have happened.

But first, a tidbit from a recent analysis of the 2010 census that ranked states by their degree of urbanization:  Arizona is the 9th most urbanized state in the U.S., with 90% of our population living on less than 2% of the state’s land area and with an urban population density of 2625 people/mi2 in those urban areas. Care to guess what isthe most urbanized state in the U.S.? 
Answer below.

And now, our news:

1. Join me in welcoming the newest addition to the CAP Family:  Abby York’s and husband Zach’s new daughter Zephyr Elizabeth Narus, born on January 16 2012.

2.The 2011-12 CAP Grad Grants competition that was recently completed produced nearly a dozen high quality proposals. We were able to support 7 at the full amount requested, including one multi-investigator award, and 3 at slightly reduced “seed funding” levels. Congratulations to those students who received support and thanks to previously funded students and postdoc Laura Turnbull for your hard work on the peer review panel.

3. Proposals for REUs, summer graduate research support, and faculty summer salary are being reviewed by the Executive Committee now and decision letters should be out very soon.

4. Outreach/Stakeholder Engagement update:  We have recently initiated several exciting projects with existing and new community partners:

  • McDowell Sonoran Conservancy: We are collaborating with the Conservancy’s monitoring programs to study human impacts on the ecology of the McDowell Mountain Preserve, east of Scottsdale. As part of this collaboration, we have trained Conservancy volunteers to sample the distribution of ground-dwelling arthropods on and off the Conservancy’s trail system.
  • Salt River Project and Valley Permaculture Alliance: We are part of a unique collaboration between the Salt River Project (a local utility) and the Valley Permaculture Alliance (a Phoenix-based urban gardening educational non-profit) to involve citizens in studying the impacts of residential tree plantings. “Citizen Scientists” who opt into this program first plant free trees, provided by SRP, in their yards, then work with CAP scientists to measure tree growth, tree health, and the various benefits of trees in residential yards.
  • Desert Botanical Garden: We have joined with the DBG (the lead institution), ASU’s Ecosystem Conservation and Resilience Initiative, Audubon Arizona, the City of Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department, Maricopa County Parks and Recreation Department, and the Phoenix Mountains Preservation Council to form The Conservation Alliance, a collaboration to foster community engagement to study, restore, and promote the mountain park preserves of metropolitan Phoenix. This initiative was recently chosen as an awardee in the Five Communities Project competition sponsored by the Center for the Future of Arizona.
  • Tres Rios Wastewater Treatment Wetland:  Last summer we began work at this newly constructed wetland facility in the West Valley using a small grant from the USGS (L.Turnbull, PI). Our research focuses on understanding the water and nutrient budgets of this hard-working wetland. A main goal of our Tres Rios work is to partner with the City of Phoenix to manage this ecosystem in a way that maximizes its ability to provide both expected and serendipitous ecosystem services.

5. Education Update: First off, please help me welcome Monica Elser back from her sabbatical in Argentina with husband Jim, and join me in thanking Gina Hupton for her hard work to keep our education programs strong and growing in Monica’s absence. Our Ecology Explorers program is collaborating with ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design & the Arts on a performance initiative called “At Home in the Desert: Youth Engagement and Place”.  Check out the most recent Network Newsletter for more information on this exciting interdisciplinary activity (http://news.lternet.edu/Article2471.html ).  In other news, our Summer 2012 Ecology Explorers Teachers Workshop received 79 applications for 19-20 slots.  This summer’s program will focus on high school teachers from central and west Phoenix as we will be holding the workshop on ASU’s West Campus.  The workshop will include a field trip to the Tres Rios Wastewater Treatment Wetlands.

6. As most of you know, we relaxed our plans to shut down the North Desert Village Experiment (NDV) and have kept NDV operating on a business as usual status.  We recently received formal permission from the ASU Powers That Be to continue NDV operations through 2012. That said, the plan is to close down data collection and maintenance at NDV at the end of this year.  If you are conducting research at NDV, I strongly encourage you to wrap it up by the end of this calendar year.

7. Many of you recently received a request from Marcia to update your project descriptions for CAP-related research.  This is part of our effort to prepare well in advance for our Midterm Site Review by NSF, which will take place next year.  Please take a few minutes to get this valuable information to Marcia so that we can keep our website as up to date as possible.

8. Don’t forget about our upcoming CAP Seminars: On Friday April 13 we are lucky to have Bob Waide, Director of the LTER Network Office, join us (9:30 – 11:00 in GIOS 481). On Friday May 4 we will have our End-Of-Semester Send-Off that will focus on intra-program networking and will highlight several recently funded research projects and as-yet funded ideas (3:30 – 5:00 in GIOS 481). The latter will be followed by our final CAPpy Hour of the academic year.

9. On May 16 & 17, the LTER Network Science Council will hold its annual meeting at the Andrews Experimental Forest site, outside of Eugene OR.  CAP will be well represented at this meeting by Heather Bateman (Co-Lead of our Biodiversity IPA), Chuck Redman (giving an invited plenary talk), Marcia (co-chair of the Network Communications Committee), and me.

10. Mark your calendars for the 2012 Triennial (is that a word?) LTER Network All Scientists Meeting, which will be held September 10 – 14 in Estes Park CO, at the infamous YMCA of the Rockies. The LTER Network Office will pay for travel for 15 CAP participants, with some stipulations on support. We will use some CAP funds to send a few additional students, scientists, and staff to the meeting. Be watching in the next couple of weeks for a Call for Travel Support.

11. Also in September, Nancy Grimm will be returning to us from her two year hiatus in Washington D.C. where she changed the world in as-yet discovered ways. Nancy will resume her leadership of the CAP LTER Program at that time. I will continue in my role as co-lead of the Water IPA, with Ray Quay, and on the CAP Executive Committee, and I will assist Nancy in every way that I can with her transition back to once again being your Fearless Leader. Once the time arrives, please join me in welcoming Nancy home!!

Item #11 is bitter-sweet for me. Like you, I will be happy to have Nancy back, but that means that this will be my last Director’s Message. I have very much enjoyed being Director of CAP LTER and I appreciate the trust and patience that everybody has extended to me during my time on the job. It’s a great group we have here!! Please take note of this semester’s CAP Success Stories below and do not forget that I am always interested in your ideas—even after September! My door is always open!

Thanks for your support,
Dan Childers

P.S. The answer to the census urbanization question above:  California.

Recent Publication Congratulations go out to the following (There are more 2012 pubs out there! Please send these to Marcia and Cindy.):

Bang, C., S. H. Faeth and J. L. Sabo. 2012. Control of arthropod abundances, richness and composition in a heterogeneous desert city. Ecological Monographs 82:85-100.

Koch, G., D.L.Childers, E.Gaiser, and R.Price, 2012. Hydrological conditions control P loading and aquatic metabolism in an oligotrophic, subtropical estuary.  Estuaries & Coasts 35:292-307.

Metson, G., R. Hale, D. Iwaniec, E. Cook, J. Corman, C. Galletti, and D. Childers, 2012.  Phosphorus in Phoenix:  A budget and spatial representation of phosphorus in an urban ecoystem.  Ecol. Applications.  22(2):705-721.

Shrestha, M., A. York, C. Boone and S. Zhang. 2012. Land fragmentation due to rapid urbanization in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area: Analyzing the spatiotemporal patterns and drivers. Applied Geography 32:522-531.

Turnbull, L., Wilcox, B.P., Belnap, J., Ravi, S., D’Odorico, P., Childers, D.L., Gwenzi, W., Okin, G., Wainwright, J., Caylor, K., Sankey, T., 2012. Understanding the role of ecohydrological feedbacks in ecosystem-state change in drylands.  Ecohydrology DOI: 10.1002/eco.265.