2008-2009 Charles Bullard Fellows in Forest Research

Harvard Forest is pleased to announce the 2008-2009 Charles Bullard Fellows in Forest Research. The purpose of this fellowship program, established in 1962, is to support advanced research and study by persons who show promise of making important contributions, either as scholars or administrators, to forestry defined in its broadest sense as the human use and study of forested environments.

This year's Bullard Fellows were selected from a large pool of international applicants and cover a broad array of forest-related subjects. These nine distinguished practitioners and academics from across the United States and the globe will spend one to two semesters conducting research based in Cambridge or at the Harvard Forest in Petersham.

Fellows are supported by an endowment named after the benefactor Charles Bullard. While in residence at Harvard, Fellows interact with faculty and students, give seminars, participate in conferences and symposia and avail themselves of the University's great research resources.

"The Harvard community benefits immensely from the presence of the outstanding scholars and fellows supported by the Bullard program," says David R. Foster, director of Harvard Forest and chair of the Bullard Fellowship committee. "The breadth of research encompassed by this year's class of scholars is vast, ranging from conservation, tropical and soil microbial ecology to forest history and management to conservation policy to regional land-use change scenario modeling."

The Charles Bullard Fellows for the 2008-2009 Academic year are:

Stephen Blackmer is the president and founder of the Northern Forest Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to building a sustainable economy, revitalizing local communities, and protecting landscapes of the northeastern United States. During his time as a Charles Bullard fellow, Blackmer will be collaborating with researchers at the Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Forest developing conservation and social change strategies to increase social, economic, and ecological resilience in a world dealing with rapid climate change.

Xiaojun Du, a forest ecologist at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, researches interspecific associations related to the structure and dynamics of ecosystems. During his 12-month fellowship, Du will use long-term census data from tree plots in Barro Colorado Island, Panama, and Malaysia to examine interspecific associations and their relationships with species distributions over the past several decades. He will work closely scientists at the Harvard University Arnold Arboretum, including Stuart Davies and Peter Ashton and with David Orwig and David Foster at the Harvard Forest.

Serita Frey is a soil microbial ecologist at the University of New Hampshire where she examines how global change affects the composition and diversity of soil microbial communities and microbial-mediated carbon and nitrogen cycles. During her 6-month fellowship at the Harvard Forest, Frey will collaborate with Anne Pringle in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and will be extending her research in the Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program examining the effects of soil warming and nitrogen fertilization on microbial metabolism.

Carlos Garcia is a forest ecologist at the Institute of Ecological Sciences, a unit of the University of the Andes in Venezuela. Garcia's research centers on the mechanisms allowing tree establishment in environments characterized by stressful light conditions. During his 9-month fellowship, he will be collaborating with Noel Michele Holbrook and working in the Holbrook Laboratory at Harvard's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

Matts Lindbladh researches forest history and forest conservation at Swedish University of Agriculture Sciences. During his four-month fellowship at the Harvard Forest, Lindbladh will be collaborating with Wyatt Oswald and David Foster on a LTER project examining the post-glacial and recent dynamics of the New England vegetation as a consequence of climate change and human activity.

Nophea Sasaki is a forest ecologist at the University of Hyogo in Japan. Sasaki studies forest management in the context of climate change policy, with emphasis on the role of improved forest management in carbon sequestration in Japanese and tropical forests. During his 7-month stint as a Charles Bullard Fellow, Sasaki will collaborate with David Kittredge regarding the estimation of the potential reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries.

Bill Sobczak, a stream biogeochemist and ecologist at Holy Cross College, studies the fate of terrestrial-derived organic matter and aquatic primary production in a variety of aquatic ecosystems. Sobczak's time at the Harvard Forest will be spent studying organic matter dynamics in watersheds with different forest composition and hydrology. His research will advance LTER studies in collaboration with Emery Boose at the Harvard Forest and Peter Raymond at Yale University.

Debabrata Swain is the Conservator of Forests in Berhampur Circle, India. Swain's research interests include understanding past and present human impacts on tropical deciduous forests. During his 12-month fellowship, Swain will be working closely with David Foster to address historical human demographic, sociological and ecological trends in order to prepare a sociological and ecological evaluation aimed at future management reform of Similipal National Park.

Jonathan Thompson, a forest ecologist and ecological modeler from Oregon State University will collaborate with David Foster, David Kittredge, Paul Moorcroft and other colleagues to advance the use of future scenarios to guide research and conservation activities in New England and across the U.S. LTER Network. For the regional effort Thompson will simulate forest dynamics, timber harvest, land development and other land-use changes over the next fifty years in order to project changes in important ecosystem services including carbon storage, water availability, wildlife habitat and conservation status.