Selected Posts

Teaching related

	Tweeting for conservation and biodiversity. My experience using Twitter as tool to promote idea sharing and discussion in an introductory environmental science course.
	“The Top 75″ Wetland Plants. Learning common wetland plants by drawing them in a wetland ecology course.
	Smelling your way down the redox ladder: wetland ecology in a bottle. Summary of a fun laboratory experiment in a wetland ecology course.
	Wetland Ecology & Management. A series of posts summarizing the day-to-day activities of an intensive three-week course in wetland ecology at the Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology in May 2012.

Research related

	Deep in the northern Wisconsin peat. Summary of fieldwork in Summer 2012 for a project aimed at better understanding how ecosystems may respond to ongoing and future climate change.  Includes a fun, homemade video.
	The answer is blowin’ in the wind.  Summary of a recent paper that assesses the impact of deforestation and dust mobilization on bog ecosystems.
	Spring break in Wisconsin! Summary of fieldwork in northern Wisconsin in March of 2012. We were collecting sediment cores from three lakes in the region. Includes a homemade video that documents our activities.
	Save the amoeba? Musings on biogeography and the potential value of microbial diversity, and how the “rediscovery” of a rare species of amoeba highlights the fact that some microbial species have highly restricted geographic distributions.

Teaching & research related

From prized arboretum to forgotten forest: a century of change.  A post that details the establishment and history of the Lehigh University Arboretum and Experimental Forest Plantation.  Started in the early 1900s, the Lehigh University arboretum was one of the finest university arboretums in the United States, yet it disappeared from campus culture by the early 1950s.  The Experimental Plantation was established as a planting experiment, and forgotten about at about the same time. Lehigh students are now investigating the ecological history of these locations, and assessing the outcome of the unique planting experiment.

Science, art, and inspiration

	Palynologist as artist. Artist as palynologist. Exploring art-science relationships by highlighting a little of the work of Gunnar Erdtman, a Swedish botantist that brought the study of pollen to the world. Art informs science by focusing the scientist’s observation skills.  Science informs art by providing endless source material for the artist.
	Leaping the hedges with a butterfly amoeba. Some rather non-linear thoughts on scientific inspiration and career paths, drawn primarily from thinking about the career of 17th century scientist Joseph Leidy.

Just for fun

	Looking for old trees on Lehigh’s campus. A few old trees on the campus of Lehigh University.
	Learning from fish and a four-year old. A fun project with my daughter. Password is my daughter’s first name (capitalized).