A new predictive model suggests that climate change may allow common ragweed to extend its growing range northward and into major northeast metro areas, worsening conditions for millions of people with hay fever and asthma. 

Plant ecologist Kristina Stinson, Environmental Conservation, who leads a research team that has been studying this plant for over a decade – particularly how it responds to elevated CO2 levels – worked with climate modeler and corresponding author Michael Case at University of Washington on this project. Details appear online in the journal PLOS One, and were also featured in The Daily Hampshire Gazette, as well as University of Washington News. Read more

OEB PhD student Mariamar Gutierrez Ramirez won the Best Student Presentation Award at the annual Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) meeting which was held in San Antonio, TX in October 2018.  Her work “Evaluating the Impact of Overnight En Route Weather over the Gulf of Mexico on Lean Mass of Spring Migrants” investigates direct impacts of temperature and humidity on the body condition of migratory birds after flying non-stop across the Gulf of Mexico, a minimum distance of almost 1000 km.  Mariamar captured songbirds during spring migration on a barrier island off the coast of Florida and measured body condition using Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Body Composition Analysis, and investigated the climatic variables that explained arrival lean body mass. Mariamar is a fourth year PhD candidate in Dr. Alexander Gerson’s lab. 

Professor Kristen DeAngelis discusses her work on a soil-warming experimental plot of hardwoods in Central Massachusetts and its effect on carbon loss. The segment begins at 5:50. Read more

Entomologists Joseph Elkinton, George Boettner and Hannah Broadley at UMass Amherst are declaring victory this month over the invasive winter moth – which begins life as a leaf-chomping, tree-denuding caterpillar that had threatened wide-spread defoliation of coastal New England shade trees and blueberries until the researchers introduced a natural parasitic fly that has greatly reduced moth numbers. Read more