REU Site: Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions in a Changing Global Environment

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Global change drivers, including warmer temperature, changing precipitation, increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and ozone, deposition of reactive nitrogen, invasive species, and habitat loss, are affecting all ecological systems. Multiple drivers often act synergistically; e.g., global warming and atmospheric nitrogen deposition may facilitate the spread of invasive species. Such biosphere-atmosphere interactions are not well understood despite being crucial components of global change ecology. Therefore, it is important to train young researchers to identify and experimentally address these interactions in order that they ultimately are able to help solve the complex global environmental problems of the 21st Century. This project continues a Research Opportunities for Undergraduates (REU) program at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS). Students experience a truly interdisciplinary program focused on the ecological and atmospheric causes and consequences of global change. They receive extensive mentoring from both ecologists and atmospheric scientists who teach and conduct research at UMBS, and they are immersed within a large, interactive and intellectually diverse community of senior researchers, graduate students and other undergraduate students. REU students benefit from a unique collection of scientists, facilities, and ongoing field studies focused on global change. Examples are (1) the UMBS Forest Carbon Cycle Research Program, (2) the Program for Research on Oxidants: PHotochemistry, Emissions, and Transport (PROPHET), (3) projects focused on elevated carbon dioxide effects on plant-herbivore interactions, (4) projects focused on measuring biosphere-atmosphere exchanges of carbon, nitrogen, and volatile organic compounds, and (5) projects focused on invasive species. The program provides comprehensive training via an intensively mentored individual research project, a series of workshops in ecology, atmospheric chemistry, global change, experimental design and statistics, professional ethics, and communication; a weekly biosphere-atmosphere reading group; and attendance at UMBS research seminars. The program emphasizes active participation by students in all phases of high quality research, from project conception through presentation of results. In addition, aggressive recruiting practices have resulted in the participation of women (60%) and underrepresented minorities (24%) in the current UMBS REU Site Program. Recruitment efforts are being expanded to include partnerships with underrepresented minority-serving institutions, a recruiting event at UMBS, and support for prior REU students to act as student ambassadors for the program.