*The Soil Science Society of America has awarded Dr. Diana Wall with its highest honor, the Presidential Award at its 2013 annual meeting.
*The budget and debt impasse in Congress is taking its toll on scientific research. These articles in Environment and Energy Publishing and the Chronicle highlight some of the casualties of the government shutdown and funding freeze.
*Dr. Diana Wall’s biography page as the 2013 Laureate of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement is now up!
*The Huffington Post featured a video segment on threats to soil biodiversity, which included participation from Dr. Diana Wall and others.
*Dr. Ross Virginia and others explain that there is no race for the Arctic in a future, warmer world and that there is a large amount of international cooperation looking to deal with threats to this region.
*Dr. Diana Wall has contributed comments for an article the New York Times has on soil biodiversity and what losses of this diversity may mean for the planet.
*The BBC has an interview with Dr. Diana Wall about how Antarctic nematodes will respond to climate change.
*Dr. Byron Adams, one of our collaborators on the McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER project from Brigham Young University, is featured in an NSF interview about some of his research conducted in Antarctica!
*Dr. Diana Wall’s lecture as the current Tyler Prize for the Environment Laureate has been made available here!
*PNAS has a podcast up with Dr. Diana Wall discussing soils and how the life within them may respond to climate warming.
*Voice of America has an article and video up covering Tyler Prize winner Dr. Diana Wall and her research.
*Dr. Diana Wall is the 2013 Tyler Prize for the Environment laureate! This highly prestigious award recognizes her many contributions to ecology globally in helping us to understand the role soil biodiversity plays in the environment and for human well-being. Read more about it on The Coloradoan!
*The Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative hosted an international workshop on February 26 and 27 to coordinate planning for the first ever global assessment of soil biodiversity.
*Congratulations to the WISSARD team for collecting the first organisms from a lake beneath the surface ice of Antarctica!
*The Antarctic field season for the Wormherders is in full swing! Check out our blog to get all the updates about the research we’re doing. Dartmouth’s IGERT program has also written a blog post about the soil biology research going on in Antarctica!
*A recent PNAS paper by Noah Fierer, Diana Wall and their colleagues has been covered by Science Daily, looking at functional differences of soil microbial communities across several different ecosystems.
*The 5th International Polar and Alpine Microbiology Conference will be held September 8-12, 2013. A circular for the conference may be found here
*Dr. Diana Wall was the 4th annual recipient of the South Dakota School of Mines Mines Medal, awarded for her work on soil biodiversity and how it impacts humanity.
*Dr. Diana Wall is co-author on an open letter to NSF regarding the Biological Sciences Directorate’s new proposal submission and review processes. She also co-conducted a survey on the new processes.
*Local NPR affiliate KUNC featured a story and interview with Dr. Diana Wall about her work on the soils of Antarctica.
*The Science Friday segment on NPR (July 20, 2012) featured scientists from the McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER, including Dr. Diana Wall!
*Dr. Diana Wall is co-author on a Science policy letter title Challenges to the Future Conservation of the Antarctic released on July 12. This article has also been highlighted on Our Amazing Planet!
*Dr. Diana Wall and Dr. Kelly Ramirez attended the Rio+20 conference where they shared information about the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative.
*Discovery news carried a story outlining the suggestions that have been made for the future of Antarctic research by the special blue ribbon panel to which Dr. Diana Wall was appointed last fall!
*Dr. Wall attended the Planet under Pressure conference, which included a diverse international attendance discussing solutions to global problems in sustainability in anticipation of the UN’s Rio+20 conference on sustainable development this June.
*Dr. Wall was awarded the 2012 SCAR President’s Medal for Excellence in Antarctic Research for her contributions to Antarctic science and advice on policy. She will receive the award at the 2012 SCAR Open Science Conference in July.
*As a member of the blue ribbon panel appointed to help determine the future of Antarctic science, Dr. Wall traveled to Palmer Station on the Antarctic Peninsula.
*Dr. Wall has a chapter in a new book published as part of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, titled Antarctic Ecosystems: An extreme environment in a changing world
*The National Academy of Science put out a press release highlighting a paper looking at global distributions of soil animal taxa published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, on which Dr. Diana Wall is a coauthor and was NSF PI with Dr. Jim Garey, University of South Florida.
*The National Academies Press released Future Science Opportunities in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean in a free-to-read prepublication format on their website. This report was authored by a National Research Council committee, of which Diana Wall was a member.
* Ashley Shaw has received the Ecological Society of America Student Travel Award, to attend the annual meeting in Austin, Texas. Way to go Ashley!
* We have a new member of the Wall lab; our new post-doctoral researcher, Dr. Martijn Vandegehuchte, arrived on June 3rd. Martijn obtained his Ph.D. entitled Environmental and genetic aspects of aboveground-belowground interactions in the Ammophila arenaria system at Ghent University, Belgium, in the fall of 2010. His general interests include community genetics, food and indirect interaction web theory, local adaptation, and the role of soil biota in ecological and evolutionary processes.
* Our summer field season has begun! We kicked off the field season by sampling for our project based out of Konza Prairie LTER in Kansas, which is looking at how carbon and nitrogen flow through a grassland ecosystem. Other work includes trips to the Jornada Basin LTER in New Mexico and the Shortgrass Steppe LTER in northern Colorado.
* Tracy Smith presented her Masters defense, titled Impacts of permafrost thaw on soil nematode viability and habitat suitability in an Antarctic polar desert ecosystem on March 28.
* Our post-doctoral researcher, Dr. Uffe Nielsen, will be starting a job in Sydney, Australia shortly, where he will working as a researcher at the University of Western Sydney! He will be leaving around the start of July, and will be missed!
* Kyrie presented her research with nematode isotopic analysis at the Celebrating Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium at CSU in April 2011. Her project measured stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen to standardize isotope abundance measuring techniques for nematodes.
* Antarctic Lecture series wrapped up for spring 2011! We had a great line-up of speakers to present at the Poudre Public Library this past spring. Thank you all for attending, and stay tuned for word of our fall lineup!
* Interesting State of the Planet blog entry from the Earth Institute (Columbia University) on “Antarctic Secrets.” Also check out the New York Times blog by John Goodge (professor of geological sciences at the University of Minnesota-Duluth) focused on his research in Antarctica.
* The 2011 Antarctic field season is underway…follow the “Wormherders” on NemaBlog!
* Second Circular: Wageningen Conference on Applied Soil Science, “Soil Science in a Changing World” to be held 18-22 September, 2011 in Wageningen, The Netherlands (see brochure).
* McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER Science Meeting, August 27-28, 2010, Colorado State University: Thanks to all attendees of this year’s meeting for making it a successful and productive weekend! (visit the meeting website)
*Call for paper submission and online registration for the 2010 Soil Ecology Society/Royal Entomological Society joint meeting, September 7-9, University of Plymouth (meeting/registration details; call for papers)
* Interesting presentation by photographer James Balog showing extensive time-lapse proof of ice loss posted on TED.
* New Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) website up…check it out here.
* Nematode video shot from the Wall lab up on YouTube!
* Research being funded by the Winslow Foundation in collaboration with CU Boulder colleagues Noah Fierer and Scott Bates, as well as globalsoilmap.net, to characterize soil biota in African ecosystems. Click here for more details on the project.
* Check out our blog for highlights from the 2009/2010 Antarctic field season!
Wall Lab members and friends near the Beardmore Glacier, 83° S
* 2010 C. elegans Meeting on Aging, Metabolism, Stress, and Small RNA, August 1-4, 2010, Madison, Wisconsin (visit website)
* Wageningen conference on applied soil science: ‘Soil Science in a Changing World’, 18-22 September 2011, Wageningen, The Netherlands. For more information see the brochure.
* Diana Wall featured in “Distinguished researcher of nematodes, soil,” an article by the Rocky Mountain Collegian.
* New CSU program coming July, 2010: Summer Soil Institute (click here for the brochure, or go to the application site). Organized by the College of Agricultural Sciences, Warner College of Natural Resources, and the School of Global Environmental Sustainability.
* Global Soil Biodiversity research highlighted by NSF
Recent research by Diana Wall and colleagues at NREL, the University of South Florida, and Lancaster University, is highlighted on NSF’s “Discoveries.” Click here to see the NSF feature.
* Opportunity for students: PhD course in Dynamics of Organic Matter in Soil. The course takes place 6-12 June at Kristiansminde field station approximately 80 km from Copenhagen, Denmark. The application deadline is April 12, 2010. For more information click here.
* Opportunity for PhD students: Soil Ecology – Taking Global Issues Belowground. This course takes place 20-24 June in Wageningen, Netherlands. The course links soil ecology to societal issues, especially focusing on the role soil organisms can play in the solution of these issues. For more information and registration visit the website or see the brochure.