Grand Valley awarded $500K to study arctic vegetation as part of NSF study on climate change

Bob Hollister, assistant professor at Grand Valley State University, has done field research in the arctic for 15 years, but next summer will be the first time he'll take students from the university with him.

The National Science Foundation recently awarded GVSU a $502,600 grant to fund a five-year study of arctic vegetation as part of the Arctic Observing Network's program to measure climate change. For the next five summers, Hollister, two undergrads and two grad students will collaborate with student researchers from the University of Texas, Florida International University and University of Alaska to study the arctic vegetation.

"The four institutions are collectively looking to see how vegetation is changing, trying to automate measurements using multi-spectral cameras that tell when the plants turn green and how big they're getting," Hollister says. "The more energy they absorb the bigger they get, the bigger they get the more they absorb -- as the vegetation gets bigger in the arctic it can have a huge impact on the energy balance.

Students will look at the plants' nutritional ability to support herbivores such as caribou and document the amount of carbon being absorbed or released, Hollister says. As the arctic's soil warms and dries, it breaks down and releases carbon. Hollister says this warming is thought to be a large contributor of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

"One of the big things is the scaling up of what's happening at the square-foot level to the square-mile level so we can make regional projections approaching the whole arctic," Hollister says.

Source: Bob Hollister, Grand Valley State University

Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].