The Northern Ecosystems Research for Undergraduates (NERU) program focuses on the impacts of climate change on ecosystems in Northern Sweden. The program is a collaboration between the Univ. of N.H. and the Abisko Scientific Research Station. Read more…

We will not offer a summer 2016 program. New program info. will be posted as funding becomes available. All NSF REU student opportunities are listed on NSF REU program websites.
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Staff Directory


NERU Research Areas
for Summer 2015
  • Implementing metal and metal isotope analyses to track the progress and impacts of thaw
  • Methane Emissions from lakes and peatlands
  • Using remote sensing to understand changing plant community composition and water surfaces
  • Understanding changing microbial communities across the subarctic landscape
  • Lake vegetation and geochemistry to understand carbon cycling

Program Mentors

varner  

Ruth Varner
UNH Assoc. Prof., Biogeochemistr
Dept. of Earth Sciences and Earth Systems Research Center

Research topics:

Methane emission from lakes, streams and ponds; Lake sediment geochemistry to understand C cycling (with Joel Johnson).

     
bryce  

Julie Bryce
UNH Assoc. Prof. Geochemistry,
Dept. of Earth Sciences

Research topics:
Base cation cycling across geological and mycorrhizal gradients in recently thawed terrains; Mercury cycling in recently thawed terrains (with Ruth Varner).

     
frey  

Maurice Crawford
University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Assoc. Prof., Biology
Research topics:

Fish ecology;
Estuarine habitat conservation/restoration;
Impacts of land use on coastal systems;
Dispersal and movement of organisms;
The interplay between science and policy.

frey  

Serita Frey
UNH Professor, Soil Microbial Biology
Dept. of Natural Resources and the Environment
Research topics:
Microbial response to temperature;
Fungal community response to long-term nitrogen fertilization;
Nitrogen fixation by mosses;
Microbial dynamics across a heath-shrub-birch ecotone
(See Haley Dunleavy's work, 2013);
Fungal/bedrock geology interactions (with Julie Bryce).

     
frey  

Erik Hobbie
UNH Research Associate Professor, Terrestrial Ecology
Earth Systems Research Center

Research topics:
Carbon and nitrogen cycling in forest and tundra from stable isotope measurements;
Interactions between ectomycorrhizal fungi and host plants under climate change;
Quantifying organic nitrogen use in pulse-labeling and FACE experiments;
Mammalian diets, particularly fungivory, from isotopic measurements experiments.
More information...

     
palace  

Michael Palace
UNH Research Asst. Professor, Tropical Ecology & Remote Sensing of Biometric Properties
Earth Systems Research Center
Research topics:
Characterizing plant species composition using novel remote sensing methods (in collaboration with Ruth Varner);
Detection of thaw ponds and permafrost collapse using remote sensingĀ  (in collaboration with Ruth Varner).

     
johnson  

Joel Johnson
UNH Assoc. Professor, Geology
Dept. of Earth Sciences

Research topics:
Using sedimentary records from the shallow methane bearing lakes to reconstruct the late Holocene sedimentary history and track methane related diagenesis through core sedimentology/description, particle size measurements, radiocarbon dating, CHNS elemental analysis, and pore water geochemistry (with Ruth Varner)