New paper! Repurposing landfills for grassland biodiversity

Landfills are a common landscape feature in the Anthropocene. Despite their unfortunate environmental impacts, they can also make great sites for restoring grassland ecosystems, inspiring visitors and providing homes for grassland-associated plants and animals. In a new commentary in Ecological Restoration, I discuss this silver lining in the context of landfills in the Mid-Atlantic US, and specifically a recent re-restoration of an important landfill grassland in Croton, NY. The site, which was championed by both Roger Tory Peterson and Pete Seeger, was restored in the 1990s and again in recent years (see Webster, 2021, same issue). The map in the paper was based the EPA’s LMOP database. You can explore the data and get the code to make the map here: https://github.com/mikeallen-eco/NEUS_landfills

Allen, M. C. (2021). Landfills as islands of grassland biodiversity: placing a next-generation habitat restoration plan in context. Ecological Restoration, 39:284-287. (link)

Following the eDNA trail of the Spotted Lanternfly

All organisms leave behind a trail of shed DNA in the environment. Such environmental DNA (eDNA) has proven a powerful and convenient way to sample for aquatic organisms, but efforts to move eDNA onto land are increasingly gaining steam (e.g., see here). Terrestrial animals like insects also leave behind a DNA trail on vegetation, especially sap-sucking insects like the invasive Spotted Lanternfly (pictured above top-middle on a grape vine).

How easy is insect DNA to detect on foliage? Can it be useful for monitoring? How long does it last on vegetation? The answers to these questions are “very!”, “yes!”, and “about 1 week!”. We recently published 2 open access papers on the topic related to invasive insects in the journal Environmental DNA. These describe: 1) a head-to-head comparison in which we show eDNA surveys outperform visual surveys for Spotted Lanternfly in vineyards; and 2) a series of experiments showing Brown-marmorated Stink Bug DNA can persist on foliage in a detectable form for >1 week in the absence of rainfall.

The Spotted Lanternfly paper: http://doi.org/10.1002/edn3.2

Stinkbug DNA degradation paper: http://doi.org/10.1002/edn3.229

How will we monitor the ecological impacts of offshore wind in North America?

Thousands of wind turbines are coming to the Atlantic continental shelf in the next few decades. What will the ecological monitoring at these installations look like? How will we know what effect they have on the marine ecosystem?

Well… I’ve now finished my 2-month gap period researching and preparing a report on this subject for the NJ Climate Change Alliance. The report, prepared with my colleague Matt Campo from the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy (and reviewed by many very smart people!) was just released. You can download it here. It details the policy and methodological aspects of ecological monitoring at offshore wind farms in the eastern U.S. (so far) and in three countries in Europe with three decades of offshore wind experience.

The report: https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-wn1p-cz80

I’m now starting my second postdoc in the Lockwood Lab researching the intersection between spatial habitat modeling of coastal birds and coastal resilience planning.

Finished Environmental DNA postdoc; working on offshore energy

I officially finished up my eDNA postdoc in the Lockwood Lab last month and will be starting a second one (in coastal conservation; same lab) in mid-May. In the meantime, I’ve become involved in a short project related to ecological monitoring efforts at offshore wind turbines.

The US continental shelf is poised to increase from its current 6 offshore wind turbines (Block Island Wind Farm) to more than 6000 in a very short time period, on the order of one decade. That number could quadruple again by 2050. I’ve joined a 2-month project with the Rutgers Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy to research options to guide and inform environmental monitoring approaches that will accompany this offshore energy boom. It will be a win for carbon emissions reduction and a real (but achievable) challenge to make sure it is done in an environmentally sound manner. Read more about the coming offshore wind rush here and here.

Starting a new Postdoc: environmental DNA

On August 1st I’ll be starting a 1+ year postdoc with Dr. Julie Lockwood’s lab at Rutgers University. There I’ll be studying detection and sampling design issues associated with eDNA surveys for invasive and native animals. I’ll also be continuing my work on various conservation issues.

Read about Bald Eagle recovery

Reporter Kyle Bagenstose wrote a nice piece about the recovery of Bald Eagles in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I was interviewed and quoted in the piece after being referred by a colleague at Rutgers. This allowed me to meet Kyle and hear about his cool plans for more conservation-oriented regional news stories. Good to hear about positive (or any) conservation stories in the news! Burlington County Times, Bucks County Courier.

Here’s an animation of the Bald Eagle recovery based on BBS data:

A fun local conference (and nicely designed poster)

To Maine for the USDA GradCAP program meeting

I spent 3 days in Portland, Maine last week with a great group of grad students and mentors from the USDA, Manomet, Maine DEP, Gulf of Maine Research Institute, and UMaine. We spent a day thinking and learning about climate adaptation in agriculture, forestry and aquaculture, and drafting a paper about what is needed to enable new leaders to tackle these challenges. Again, I definitely recommend applying for this program if you are at a land grant University in the Northeast and your work deals with climate. Learned a lot, good opportunities, and relatively low time commitment. Here is a link to more info: https://www.climatehubs.oce.usda.gov/hubs/northeast/topic/gradcap And here is a link to the info sheet for the webinar I gave as part of the program: https://www.climatehubs.oce.usda.gov/sites/default/files/allen_final_web508.pdf

Here’s a news snippet with more info.

USDA webinar about grassland birds

I recently had the opportunity to give a live-streamed webinar about my grassland bird research for the USDA Northeast Climate Hub. This was part of my participation in that organization’s new “Graduate Student Climate Adaptation Partners” program. I highly recommend grad students apply for this program if your research relates at all to the topics of climate and agriculture. It was a great group of people to interact with and a great resource to broaden my knowledge of the challenges posed by climate change. Check out the program here. The webinar was live streamed, and eventually will be viewable here: https://www.climatehubs.oce.usda.gov/node/1505