There is an upcoming special issue of CJS on earthworms as invasive species in Latin America . Hopefully it will be out by November. (See attached file: cjs_Table of content.doc).
I attended a recent meeting in Albuquerque to lay out the future of network-level research in LTER. This will be an important part of Luquillo's future. NSF is looking for this at sites, and there may be much new money.
Attached (see attached file: Net LTER strategic plan.ppt) is a presentation by Scott Collins. It describes the planning so far. Look this over. This will be a big theme at the All Scientists Meeting, and I want to talk about it at the Luquillo meeting at ASM (Sept. 23, Saturday, noon, in lunch room). LTER 4 fits this program pretty well (not by chance alone).
New web sites within the LUQ LTER and mailing group addresses:
The LUQ LTER Schoolyard web pages
The LUQ LTER Schoolyard Program has now a web site located at: http://luq.lternet.edu/outreach/schoolyard/default.html
This web site contains a page for each of the three participating schools, each containing the list and information of the teachers, a project description, photos of the research sites and other activities, a data catalog (list of data sets), a chart of the plant species abundance, and other miscellaneous information.
LUQ CTE Plone Web site
The LUQ CTE group has its own web site where the members (only) can share and update their documents. The common pages can be accessed from:
http://www.ites.upr.edu:8081/itesplone/projects
Only users that are recognized by the system to be part of the group will be able to “see” these documents. A word file with the instructions on how to create a user login and access the information is attached. It can also be downloaded from:
http://luq.lternet.edu/data/CTE/
The administration of this site is done by me, and I am still in the learning process, so any observations/needs/requests should be directly sent to me to emelendez@lternet.edu.
With funding from the NSF-PR-EPSCOR Program, a study will be initiated to assess the impacts of land use change in the fluvial export of carbon and nitrogen to coastal areas in Puerto Rico . Jorge R. Ortiz-Zayas from the Institute for Tropical Ecosystem Studies of the University of Puerto Rico is the lead PI. This project will be conducted in collaboration with the Universtiy of New Hampshire. PhD student Debora Figueroa-Nieves (from William McDowell lab), and University of Puerto Rico MS student Rafael Benitez will be working on the project.
The sampling sites selected represent a land use gradient that varies from extreme forested to urban conditions. This study will be conducted in five watersheds located in the Northeast region of Puerto Rico which are Río Fajardo, Río Espíritu Santo, Río Grande de Loíza, Río Piedras and Río Bayamón. Most of the sites selected have long-term water discharge and chemistry data from the USGS.
Water samples will be collected for analysis of total organic carbon (TOC), dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) and dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN). The samples will be collected biweekly at the study sites for one year. The information generated from this project will be valuable for the recently funded Caribbean Coastal Scenarios project ( Dominican Republic , Haiti , Cuba , and Puerto Rico ) which will model and predict future impacts of land use on coastal zones. Michael McClain, Florida International University , is project PI, and Jorge Ortiz is the Puerto Rico Co-PI.