The University of New Mexico Sevilleta Field Station is awarded a grant for the acquisition of major equipment items in support of teaching and research efforts in ecophysiology and molecular ecology, including a portable system for field analysis of photosynthesis and numerous equipment items required for molecular microbial ecology. The award will have a major impact on our summer REU program as well as summer courses that employ physiological and molecular-genetic approaches to ecology. It will enable the first offering of a summer course in microbial ecology during the summer of 2010.
The Sevilleta Field Station is nearing the end of a five-year plan of program development that includes expansion of undergraduate and graduate research and the addition of 20 course-weeks per year of college-level teaching. The Field Station is located at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, less than an hour from Albuquerque (city of >500,000) and the University of New Mexico, less than a half hour from Socorro and New Mexico Tech, and minutes from several small rural communities encompassing tremendous social, ethnic and economic diversity. The station therefore provides access to educational and outreach opportunities for UNM students; K-12 students, teachers and citizens from Albuquerque and surrounding communities; and visiting scientists from institutions within and outside New Mexico. UNM is a minority serving institution, and the Sevilleta Field Station and Sevilleta LTER Program are dedicated to enhancing minority participation in field-based research. This award will contribute to a moderately sized, state-of-the-art teaching and research program at the Sevilleta Field Station.
(NSF 0934263) This award was used to purchase major equipment items toward improving student research and teaching at the University of New Mexico’s field station at the Sevilleta National Wildlife refuge. Two disciplinary areas were targeted: 1) gas exchange and primary productivity and 2) molecular ecology. Approximately one-half of the funds from this award were used to purchase a Li-Cor LI-6400XTR Portable Photosynthesis and Fluorescence System for measurements of photosynthetic rates. This instrument arrived in April, 2010, and the instrument has been employed extensively since its purchase. In 2010 and early 2011, it was used by two graduate students, one undergraduate student and two visiting scientists in studies that combined use of this instrument with a tunable diode laser to study real-time fluxes of carbon-dioxide isotopologues. It was also used in six multi-day field campaigns by a post-doctoral researcher and a graduate student studying the effects of rainfall manipulation on Pinyon-Juniper woodlands, and it was used for collecting baseline data at multiple eddy-flux tower sites along an elevational gradient in New Mexico. The instrument will receive intense use by NSF-supported REU students at the UNM Sevilleta Field Station this coming summer, 2011. The remaining funds were used to purchase equipment for molecular-genetic work associated with microbial ecology and genomics. As a result, the Sevilleta Field Station is now equipped for state-of-the-art teaching and research in areas of ecology that employ molecular genetics. Among the purchases made in this realm were a gradient thermocycler, a system for photographing DNA electrophoresis gels, twenty sets of adjustable pipettors, four tabletop centrifuges, 2 microscopes (dissection and compound) equipped with cameras, 10 gel electrophoresis systems and two digital incubators. During 2010 and early 2011, this equipment has been used by several student researchers and a post-doctoral associate in support of metagenomic projects associated with the UNM Sevilleta Long-term Ecological Research Program, including a project in collaboration with the DOE Joint Genome Institute to examine microbial communities in blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) rhizosphere communities. During the spring-summer intersession (2011), this equipment will be used in a course in Molecular Ecology at the Sevilleta Field Station. It will also be used by graduate and undergraduate researchers in residence at the Field Station this coming summer. Publications to date: Thomey, M.L., S.L. Collins, R. Vargas, J.E. Johnson, R.F. Brown, D.O. Natvig and M.T. Friggens. 2011. Effect of precipitation variability on net primary production and soil respiration in a Chihuahuan Desert grassland. Global Change Biology 17:1505-1515. Recent abstract: Powell, A.J., D.O. Natvig, A. Porras-Alfaro, J. Redfern, M. Hutchinson, K. Odenbach, S. Tringe, E. Kirton, E. Ackerman, B. Simmons, S. Collins, R. Sinsabaugh, D.A. Martinez, C. Detter, R.A. Dean, J. Magnuson and R. Berka. 2011. Metatranscriptomic inventory of rhizosphere soils in an arid grassland under global environmental change scenarios. Poster presentation at the 6th Annual DOE Joint Genome Institute Genomics of Energy & Environment Meeting, Walnut Creek, CA, March.
