Talks

1.       Science Innovation from the Perspective of a Journalist – Liz Kimbrough, Mongabay

9:45 AM – 10:25AM, Monday, May 6th, 2024

Summary:  Science communication is an important part of the scientific process, but how do we move beyond the silo of academia and get our ideas to the public? What kinds of stories do journalists pick up? How do new ideas or innovations fit into this landscape?  This talk provides some tips for where, when and how to pitch your story to the media.

2.       FromIdeastoPublications -MeredithBastian,PNAS

10:25 AM – 11:00 AM, Monday, May 6th, 2024

Summary: Various avenues and strategies for turning ideas into publications will be discussed, the PNAS review process will be explained, and other ways to become active with the journal will be noted. An overview of how PNAS has recently increased its engagement with early-career researchers will be provided, along with a review of the recruited Special Feature collections and other major recruited paper types. Various ways that PNAS is actively working to help authors overcome common barriers to publication will be explained. Finally, some information about PNAS Nexus will be provided, and differences between the sibling journals will be noted to help prospective authors consider which might be the best fit for their research.

3.       The Economic Way of Thinking for Ecologists and Conservationists – Mo Zhou, Purdue

11:15 AM – 11:55PM, Monday, May 6th, 2024

Summary: In this talk, “The Economic Way of Thinking for Ecologists and Conservationists,” Mo Zhou, an expert in Forest Economics and Management at Purdue University, will bridge the gap between ecological stewardship and economic reasoning. Drawing from her extensive research in forest management and environmental economics, Zhou will elucidate how economic tools and concepts can be employed to address conservation challenges. Participants will learn to apply cost-benefit analysis, understand market mechanisms influencing conservation efforts, and consider the economic implications of ecological decisions. Through a synthesis of theory and case studies, the presentation aims to equip ecologists and conservationists with the economic acumen necessary for making informed, sustainable management choices in a rapidly changing environmental landscape.

4.       The promise and pitfalls of ’nature-based solutions’ to our climate crisis – Peter Reich, University of Michigan & University of Minnesota

11:55 AM – 12:30 PM, Monday, May 6th, 2024 

Summary: Terrestrial plants and soils house more than three times as much carbon as is found in the atmosphere, and at least 250x as much carbon as is released each year in fossil fuel burning. Moreover, terrestrial ecosystems – i.e. forests, savannas and grasslands (but mostly forests)- have already absorbed more than 25% of all the CO2 pollution we’ve put into the atmosphere over recent centuries, and along with similar pollutant removal (i.e. “CO2 scrubbing”) by the oceans, have slowed climate warming by more than half. That is an ecosystem service by nature, likely in the quadrillions of dollars category, and is the reason forest carbon sequestration is among a handful of key mechanisms considered collectively as part of a strategy we can deploy to slow and stop climate change. 

So it is no surprise that scientists, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, and the public all hope that by modifying how and where we manage vegetation and soils, we can encourage nature to absorb a lot more atmospheric carbon and hold on to it in plants and soils.  A wide variety of nature-based solutions that might enhance carbon storage in forests, grasslands or agricultural systems have been proposed – some even have social justice and biodiversity benefits too. Although the devil is always in the details, it is true that there is substantial capacity for nature to ‘hold’ more carbon. For example, as I will present during my talk, forests alone (and excluding forests converted to urban or agricultural use) could house additional carbon equivalent to half of the amount of carbon we will emit in fossil fuel burning in the next four to five decades. Savannas, grasslands, and agricultural lands could also house yet additional carbon. However, figuring out how to make substantial use of these natural ‘tools’ will be an enormous challenge, given myriad political, economic, ecological, climate, social, and cultural barriers. Ignoring such hurdles means attempts to do so will be far less effective than they might otherwise be. And recognizing such hurdles does not diminish our need to deploy nature as a climate-change fighting tool. Instead, by facing the reality of our challenges we could potentially make good use of nature’s capacities to clean up after us yet again. If we combine the increased acquisition and storage of carbon on land with decarbonization via increased energy efficiency, reliance on renewable energy, and electrification, we can slow and stop climate change by mid-century.

5.       ZetaForests: Unravelling Global Forests Turnover and Co-Occurrence – Sandra MacFadyen, Stellenbosch University

1:30 PM – 2:00 PM, Monday, May 6th, 2024

Summary: “zetaForests” leverages advanced Multisite Generalized Dissimilarity Modelling (MS-GDM) and Zeta diversity to elucidate higher-order compositional, structural, and functional turnover and co-occurrence of global forest biodiversity. Zeta diversity is a unifying metric for incidence-based biodiversity patterns, including how species are distributed across locations. That is, it measures the number of species shared by multiple sites, providing a multi-site generalization of species turnover. This allows for a deeper analysis of biodiversity that accounts for both rare and widespread species, capturing the complexity of ecological community composition and the nuances of species interactions. In summary, zetaForests aims to understand global forest species turnover and identify the factors influencing patterns of diversity, from rare to widespread species, providing insights into both ecological community composition and the continuous change in composition across scales.

6.       Adapting Trees: Ecological Strategies in a Changing Climate – Gabriel Yan Rosa, FURB Universidade Regional de Blumenau

2:00 PM – 2:30 PM, Monday, May 6th, 2024  

Summary: “Adapting Trees” utilizes Joint Species Distribution Modelling (JSDM) through the Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities (HMSC) algorithm to integrate occurrence and climate data, with functional attributes, phylogenies, and species co-occurrence data. This enables the creation of more precise models for the potential distribution of species in the present and provides better estimates for future scenario projections. Furthermore, it allows not only the assessment of changes in the potential distribution of specific species but also changes in entire communities. With functional attributes already measured, it becomes possible to calculate the ecological strategies of current and future communities, identifying potential losses of ecological strategies in future scenarios. The aim of “Adapting Trees” is to evaluate these changes in ecological strategies within tree communities in the state of Santa Catarina, considering the impact of climate change in the future. This leads to a better understanding of the ecology of these ecosystems, facilitating the implementation of mitigation measures, estimations of changes in ecosystem services, and more precise estimates of carbon stocks for future scenarios.

7.      Forestry Remote Sensing Data Analysis using Quantum Edge Detection – Vivian Sattler,              Leibniz University Hannover

2:30 PM – 3:00 PM, Monday, May 6th, 2024  

Summary: Quantum Computing has recently emerged as a captivating frontier in research, drawing significant interest. Based on the laws of quantum physics, quantum computers are believed to hold the potential to outperform their classical counterparts in the future. This research project lies at the crossroads of quantum computing and forestry, exploring quantum image processing methods applied to forestry data. Given the computationally intensive nature of visual data analysis, existing quantum algorithms like Quantum Hadamard Edge Detection are promising candidates to enable up to exponential speedups in image processing. Its successful application to remote sensing images paves the way for the impact of quantum computing to forestry research in the times ahead.

8.       Introduction to Science-i Cyberinfrastructure – Rajesh Kalyanam, Purdue University

4:30 PM – 5:00 PM, Monday, May 6th, 2024  

Summary: The Science-I cyberinfrastructure platform will be described in this talk, including how researchers will be able to seamlessly request access to relevant datasets and perform analysis and computation on them, all from a web-based platform. An overview of the broader cyberinfrastructure resources available at Purdue University will also be provided, including the Anvil supercomputer that can be used to perform resource-intensive computations as well as machine learning workflows.

9.       Nature-Based Solutions on Indigenous Land – Bryan Van Stippen, National Indian Carbon Coalition

9:00 AM – 9:30 AM, Tuesday, May 7th, 2024  

Summary: Historically, the pressure for tribal nations and tribal member landowners to develop income from their land took the form of natural resource extraction such as minerals, oil, natural gas, timber, pastures, and water. These activities primarily benefited corporations off the reservation and often conflicted with the tribal nation’s ability to retain a healthy environment as well as decision-making control over their land.

As new economic opportunities emerge in response to climate change, tribal land which may have been underutilized has become more valuable. It is critical that tribal nations not let their natural resource assets benefit others before it benefits their communities.Formed by the Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF) and the Intertribal Agriculture Council (IAC), NICC is a tribally led non-profit program that helps tribal nations and indigenous communities take advantage of nature-based solutions to enter into environmental commodities markets through the development of carbon sequestration projects.NICC views these projects as economic development opportunities that preserve tribal nation and tribal member land ownership while returning profits to reservation economies and communities. NICC’s mission is to preserve tribal land ownership and reduce the effects of climate change by conserving the natural resources of tribal lands to minimize human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

10.    Biodiversity Partitioning of a Forest with Mathematics – Cang Hui, Stellenbosch University

9:30 AM – 10:00 AM, Tuesday, May 7th, 2024    

Summary: Biodiversity is a complex and multi-dimensional concept, with its components varying across scales and sampling efforts. Set theory provides a mathematical framework to elucidate the relationships among the scale-dependent diversity partitions. While the standard scheme of biodiversity partitioning focuses on alpha and beta components, it is insufficient to provide a complete picture of biodiversity. Instead, zeta diversity is a powerful tool that can explain patterns of biodiversity components such as turnover, occupancy frequency, endemism, distance decay, and accumulation. Zeta diversity of order n simply describes the number of species common to n sites and declines along its orders. The regression of zeta diversity components against candidate assembly processes can help tease apart drivers of species turnover and accumulation and differentiate those contributed largely by rare versus increasingly common species. Let’s walk through a forest and decipher its structure and dynamics with the lens of zeta mathematics.

11.    Biodiversity Conservation in Africa – Florence Palla, Central African Forest Observatory

10:00 AM – 10:30 AM, Tuesday, May 7th, 2024  

Summary:  Protected areas in Central Africa are one of the world’s most important networks for protecting biodiversity and combating climate change. Central Africa is a land of diversity: diversity of climates, diversity of soils, diversity of landscapes, diversity of ecosystems, diversity of flora and fauna. It’s also a land of extremes, with the Congo Basin, the world’s second-largest continuous expanse of tropical rainforest, which also contains the largest areas of swamp forest and peat bogs. But this land, which has fed generations of Africans, is under increasing pressure.

The countries of Central Africa are experiencing increasing degradation of their ecosystems as a result of ever-increasing anthropogenic pressure, influenced in particular by demographic growth and the demands of international markets. Natural ecosystems are subject to poaching, the expansion of transhumant livestock farming, the expansion of mining permits, industrial agriculture and family farming, timber exploitation (timber, fuelwood) and land conflicts. In this constantly changing context, where international and local issues are closely intertwined, protected areas are one of the most effective management tools for halting the degradation of biodiversity, reducing the impact of global change on biodiversity and helping ecosystems and human communities to adapt to these changes.

In fact, the opportunistic superimposition of industrial exploitation permits on known areas that are shared with protected areas runs counter to the application of national and international commitments relating to the preservation of biodiversity. With increasing population pressure and associated consumption of natural resources, there are few places in the world where investment in effective governance and management is not required to address threats and maintain the integrity of ecosystems.

12.    Automating Large-Scale Site-Specific Solar Resource Maps – Yaguang Zhang, Purdue

10:45 AM – 11:15 PM, Tuesday, May 7th, 2024    

Summary: The presentation details the development and application of a large-scale Sun-Shadow Simulator, a tool designed to generate dynamic prescription maps for winter road treatment by simulating sun-shadow effects. Utilizing 2016-2020 Indiana Statewide LiDAR data provided by Purdue, the simulator can identify high-risk road segments based on tree/terrain shadows and aid in reducing financial and environmental costs associated with chemical application in winter road maintenance. The simulator’s accuracy is validated through comparisons with satellite images and on-site photos. Additionally, the tool supports large-scale simulations over both area and time, and thus has potential applications in forestry, such as assessing the impact of sun shadows on plant growth and health, which could inform environmental management practices. 

13.    Improving Estimation of Belowground Tree Biomass Across Temperate and Tropical Vegetation Types – Sylvanus Mensah, University of Freiburg

11:15 AM – 11:45 AM, Tuesday, May 7th, 2024    

Summary: Accurate quantification of terrestrial biomass and carbon stock in both the above- and belowground tree parts, is a pre-requisite for successful implementation of climate-related policies. Unlike the aboveground tree part, the belowground tree compartments cannot be observed from space or airborne sensors. In addition, belowground tree biomass data are even more costly to collect, labor intensive and time consuming. With this research, we aim to compile and extract (by means of WebplotDigitizer) worldwide dataset on belowground biomass of individual trees from published articles to develop pantropical belowground biomass model as well as regional models that consider both the availability of the predictors, but also biogeographical changes including environmental (soil, climate) and vegetation types.

14.    Resolution Effects on Modelling Net Primary Production in Global Terrestrial Ecosystems – Xiaolu Tang, Chengdu University of Technology

2:00 PM – 2:30 PM, Tuesday, May 7th, 2024    

Summary: Net primary production (NPP) is an important parameter to quantify carbon balance in global terrestrial ecosystems. Although large efforts have been made, large variabilities up to several folds still exist, thus, an accurate estimate of NPP is still challenging in terrestrial ecosystems. Whether the spatial resolution affects NPP has not been reported. Therefore, in this study, we modelled NPP using three resolution (0.05, 0.25 and 0.25 degree) with the same environmental variables. Results showed that random forest could satisfactorily model NPP and can explain more than 53% variations of NPP. Spatial resolution had not effects on spatial and temporal patterns of NPP, however, spatial resolution significantly affect total NPP that global NPP varied from 57.3±3.07 for 0.05°, 61.46±3.27 for 0.25°, and 66.5±3.42 Pg C yr−1 for 0.5°. Such differences may be associated with the resolution transformation of the input variables when resampling from finer to coarser resolution, which significantly increased the spatial and temporal variation characteristics, particularly in regions within the southern hemisphere such as Africa, South America, and Australia. Therefore, our study introduces a new concept emphasizing the importance of selecting an appropriate spatial resolution when modeling carbon fluxes, with potential applications in establishing benchmarks for global biogeochemical models.