The Ecological Society of America’s SEEDS initiative, which aims to increase diversity in the field of ecology, is recruiting undergraduate students from underrepresented groups for the SPUR fellowship program. This program places students at ecological research sites across the United States. Several LTER sites are part of the SPUR fellowship program this year: Central Arizona-Phoenix (CAP) LTER, Harvard Forest LTER, Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER, Cedar Creek LTER, and Kellogg Biological Station LTER. An additional site is the Llado River Field Station in Texas.

Students accepted as SPUR fellows will engage in a research project at one of these research sites under the mentorship of a faculty member, senior graduate student, or post-doctoral fellow. SPUR fellows will receive funding for travel and housing as well as a subsistence stipend.

To view the application requirements and apply, interested undergraduate students should visit the SPUR fellowship page on the SEEDS website. Applications are due January 15, 2016.

A group of high school girls in Mesa Public Schools spent their fall break learning to code in R, a computer language used for statistical analysis. This workshop was the brainchild of Jessica Guo, a CAP graduate student, who is passionate about coding and determined to bring more girls into STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). A graduate of Mesa Public Schools herself, Jessica is part of the ASU/NASA Space Grant program.

In the workshop that Jessica led, girls accessed large, publicly-available datasets and used coding to analyze the data and to create graphs, which they presented to their peers. Among the datasets that the girls used were ones created by LTER Network sites.

Attention all Post-docs! Looking for a LTER fellowship? Apply for a two year postdoctoral fellowship today with The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) in collaboration with the National Science Foundation’s Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program beginning August 1st, 2016.
-Prescreening application deadline is October 26, 2015, 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).
-Collaborating Mentor application deadline: October 26, 2015, 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).
-Collaborating Mentor selection and commitment deadline: November 16, 2015, 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST).
-Fellowship application deadline: December 7, 2015, 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST).
Click here to find more information on SESYNC-LTER and the fellowship criteria.

Anthony Brazel, Emeritus Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, and V. Kerry Smith, Emeritus Regents’ Professor and Emeritus Professor of Economics, WP Carey School of Economics, were recently honored for their contributions to urban socioecological research in the CAP LTER research program.

Dr. Brazel, an urban climatologist, has been the driving force behind research on the Phoenix urban heat island, collaborating across disciplines with faculty and students at Arizona State University as well as with colleagues at the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, CAP’s sister urban LTER site. His research has led to Phoenix being the most studied urban heat island in the United States, and his former students now staff numerous climate-related agencies.

Dr. Smith is a renowned  environmental economist whose work with CAP has focused on the economic valuation of environmental amenities and ecosystem services, contributing important new perspectives to CAP’s research program. He has also collaborated on the Phoenix Area Social Survey and has been an important mentor to students interested in entering the economics field.

Spring brings a lot of things, including thesis and dissertation defenses. The following have either successfully completed or will be completing their defenses this spring:

• Thomas Bleasdale defended his dissertation, “Gardens of justice: Food-based social movement in south and west Phoenix,” on April 16^th (Sharon Harlan, Chair; Bob Bolin and Kevin McHugh, committee members)
• Hannah Heavenrich will defend her thesis, “Soil biogeochemical consequences of a ‘sustainable’ urban grassland to shrubland transition,” on May 13^th (Sharon Hall, Chair; Kelli Larson and Diane Pataki, committee members)
• Jeffrey Ackley will defend his dissertation, “Rich lizards: How affluence, land cover, and the urban heat island effect influence desert reptiles persisting in an urban landscape,” on May 15^th (Jianguo Wu and Brian Sullivan, co-chairs; Soe Myint, Dale Denardo, and Michael Angilletta, committee members)

• CAP REU student, Jessica Jia, successfully defended her Honor’s Thesis, “Quantifying the trade-off between landscape vegetation height, surface temperature, and water consumption in single-family residential houses for a desert city,” this spring (Kelli Larson and Elizabeth Wentz, co-chairs).

Congratulations to all of these students!

We are excited to be presenting our 17th annual CAP ASM and poster symposium on January 16th from 8 am – 4 pm at ASU SkySong, Building 3, Synergy I and II rooms. The program lists the agenda for the day and abstracts for the over 50 posters being presented, which is a record for CAP symposiums. We will be printing a limited number of programs and hope that most attendees will access abstracts and other information electronically.

Attendees should note that we will be in a new space at SkySong this year. Building 3 is to your right when you enter on SkySong Boulevard. We urge attendees to carpool (parking is to the south of Building 3), bike, or take the 72 bus from the Tempe Transit Center. The Synergy I and II rooms are accessed via the lobby of Building 3. Just follow the signage.