|
Earth Over Time
Daniel D. Richter Jr. Ph. D. '80, professor of soils and forest
ecology at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth
Sciences, has received a $425,000, five-year grant from the
National Science Foundation (NSF) to create the world's first
international network for the long-term study of global soil
change.
The grant will support the creation of a new Global Soil Change
Community (GSCC), with headquarters at the Nicholas School.
"Soil plays a key role in controlling the biogeochemistry
of our atmosphere, oceans, and freshwaters," Richter says. "We
know it's integrally connected to global climate change. And
we know that the Earth's soil is changing rapidly, driven largely
by human impacts."
Despite all this, remarkably little is understood about the rate
of these changes and the processes driving them, Richter says. "Clearly,
a new approach is needed; GSCC is one step in that direction."
GSCC will promote a broad approach to soil science that "makes
use of interdisciplinary expertise to inform scientists, students,
teachers, and policymakers alike about global soil change—not
only what's occurring below ground, but what those changes mean
for us above ground, too," Richter says.
One of GSCC's major challenges, he says, will be the networking
of the world's long-term soil studies, in which scientists monitor
and measure changes occurring in the Earth's soil. Such networks
are already in place to study long-term changes in weather, wildlife
populations, water and air quality, and other environmental systems.
With support from Duke's Center on Global Change, Richter and
graduate students from Duke, North Carolina State University,
and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have already
assembled a searchable online inventory of more than 160 research
sites worldwide. They are evaluating the sites to determine which
should be included in the new GSCC network.
"Some of the world's best test sites, especially those in
developing nations, are vulnerable to loss due to budgetary cuts,
the retirement of senior researchers, deterioration of infrastructure,
or instability of local governments," Richter says. "In
South Africa, for example, there's a thirty-year study on agricultural
soil productivity that was recently discontinued when a principal
investigator retired. This study produced many peer-reviewed
papers on soil's response to management, but now it's gone. We
can't afford to let that happen to other sites."
To communicate the new research findings, GSCC will host annual
workshops focusing on new or pressing environmental issues, such
as carbon cycling or soil contaminants. Richter plans to involve
students in the workshops and to sponsor undergraduate, graduate,
and postdoctoral research and training programs. In addition,
he is already working to establish a comprehensive online database
and reference library on global soil change that will be of value
to everyone from scientists to farmers to foresters.
ltse.env.duke.edu
|
