Three
West Virginia University
graduate students spent the 2018-2019 academic year as Graduate Student Climate Adaptation
Partners scholars, developing a digital library and webinar series based on their
climate change research.
Brooke Eastman in the
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and Gordon Dimmig and Sarah Mills from
the
Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design
represented WVU in the GradCAP program, which brought together 15 students from six
Northeast Climate Hub partner universities located from Maine to West Virginia.
Brooke Eastman, a
biology graduate student, is conducting research on climate change and forest
health.
Her research focuses on the effects of acid rain on forest health in West Virginia.
Her research is conducted at the Fernow Experimental Forest in Parsons, about a
two-hour drive south of Morgantown. Eastman is part of a 30-year experiment taking
place in the forest that simulates acid rain on one section of the forest and compares
it to a control section to chart the long-term impact of acid rain on the area.
“I’m interested in how acid rain impacts the ecosystem services that forests provide.
Ecosystem services are anything the natural world provides that benefits humans,”
Eastman said. “Forests provide recreational and economic opportunities from timber
to tourism. Forest soil actually cleans our water, and trees store a lot of carbon.
That’s why I’m really interested – the more carbon stored in the forest, the less
there is in the atmosphere.”
As part of GradCAP, Eastman presented her research via a public
webinar. She believes the experience helped facilitate an opportunity for her
and the other students to network with a group of scientists, researchers and other
industry professionals.
“It has been really amazing to connect with other people similar to me – graduate
students who are doing research and are passionate about climate adaptation,” Eastman
said. “We put our voices together and told the USDA and the broader scientific
community that we, a team of emerging leaders, are also part of the team seeking
solutions to climate adaptation.”
Sarah Mills, a
plant and soil sciences
graduate student from East Windsor, New Jersey, is studying the effects of climate
change on flower and fruit production of horticultural crops.
“It was exciting to network with other graduate students,” she said. “At the GradCAP
workshop, I met many colleagues who are working on climate change, and we all have
different research areas and perspectives.”
At the
WVU Greenhouse, Mills is investigating the impact of temperature on the interactions
between blueberry flowering and bees, their pollinator. So far, she has found that
blueberry flowering is sensitive to temperature increases – reductions in flower
quantity result in reductions in fruit production.
In another study, Mills is using petunias to examine how simulated climate through factors like water deficit stress, elevated temperature and carbon dioxide exposure affect flower development.
“These projects address the questions of how climate change affects crop production.
To my knowledge, there has been no study conducted using an incremental temperature
in blueberries or applying three environmental factors at the same time in petunias
or any other crop,” Mills said. “We hope to show how climate change, either small
increases in temperature or combinatorial effects of water, temperature and carbon
dioxide, impact our crop production.”
Gordon Dimmig is a
wildlife and fisheries resources
student from Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. His research examines long-term changes
in songbird communities from the central Appalachian Mountains.
Dimmig used a historic dataset of thousands of bird surveys conducted between 1993
and 2018 to determine how 16 songbird species are moving along the elevation gradient
and the potential effects of climate change. He found that five species expanded
upward, five species moved downward and six species remained the same, likely due
to changes in forest conditions and population trends.
“Mountainous areas have high bird diversity, and many breeding birds in the central
Appalachians have very restricted distributions. Climate change and other changes
to the environment may cause these species to become further restricted in smaller
mountaintop patches,” Dimmig said. “There is still a lot of uncertainty about how
wildlife populations and birds will respond to changing climate and environmental
conditions, so this research helps to determine what we are observing in our bird
communities. It’s very unique research because long-term data is scarce, so having
26 years of data is very valuable."
Dimmig has been part of GradCAP for the past two academic years.
“I’ve been able to broaden my understanding of climate-related issues and become
more well-rounded in my knowledge about all sorts of research in agriculture, forestry
and wildlife throughout the northeast,” he said. “I also enjoyed GradCAP because
it’s a group of students from many different universities, so I was able to create
connections with a unique cohort of researchers that would have been difficult
to do on my own.”
-WVU-
ks/ma/05/02/19
CONTACT: Katlin Swisher
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
304.293.9264;
Katlin.Swisher@mail.wvu.edu