Anthony's Science Blog

Ecological Society of America Meeting 2009

August 5, 2009 – 4:00 pm

I’ve seen lots of good talks this year and have had lots of fun conversations with fellow ecologists that I’ve gotten to know over the years. This evening I will be presenting a poster, which is the same as the poster I presented earlier this year at the Front Range Student Ecology Symposium. I actually kind of wish that I had an updated version of my poster since I have made a lot of progress on analyzing this data since I made the poster, but it should still be fun to chat with everyone.

I’ve seen some good talks this week, including lots of nitrogen talks (of course) and other good global change and biogeochem ones as well.  I especially enjoyed Dan Liptzin’s talk on rapid changes in oxygen levels in tropical soils. He showed us how the oxygen levels (and inversely, CO₂ levels) in soils track the tropical rains in Puerto Rican rainforests. He also showed, however, that within a very similar area, overall oxygen levels were high, low, or variable with no easy way to guess which spots would be which. As always, more research is called for.

The conference is being held in Albuquerque this year. It’s been fun poking around, though I have to say that my general impression is that there are a lot of sketchy characters here. I saw some sketcher harrassing a conference attendee at the bus stop yesterday and my hand was on my cell phone in case the situation worsened (it did not). Also, two nights ago when I approached the house I’m staying at, some random dude hopped up off the porch swing and took off into the night! On the plus side though, I love the little adobe-style houses and I had some awesome tacos yesterday. I unfortunately don’t have any pictures of the city. Gotta remember to bring my camera when I come to these things!