Steve and collaborators get RAPID grant to study marshes and mangroves as hurricane defenses

Steve, Anna Armitage and John Kominoski recently received a RAPID grant from NSF to compare marshes and mangroves with respect to how well they protect coasts from severe weather like hurricanes. The work builds on their ongoing mangrove density experiment in Port Aransas. They have plots ranging from 0 to 100 percent mangrove cover, and Hurricane Harvey basically passed directly over the plots. This provided a great opportunity to see how the storm effects varied with mangrove density. This weekend we’re out sampling vegetation, erosion, and decomposition in the plots. There is a lot of debris–telephone poles, dock sections, and parts of a house–in the plots. The city of Port Aransas looks hammered, with lots of houses and businesses destroyed. And a barge exploded off the coast overnight.  Not our fault, honest!

The photo below shows a house section in one of our plots.

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Chuan_Kai promoted to Associate Professor

Congratulations to Chuan-Kai Ho (shown here at the 2015 ESA meeting) who has been promoted to Associate Professor at the National Taiwan University! We wish him continued success.

Chelse Prather receives NSF grant

Chelse (now at Radford University) just received an NSF grant to study how micronutrients structure herbivore communities. The field work will be done at the UH Coastal Center, and Steve will have a subcontract at UH to help with the project. We hope that this project will involve a large team of undergraduates.

Steve awarded Moore’s Professorship

Last week Steve was awarded  a John and Rebecca Moore’s endowed chair at the University of Houston, starting in the 2013-2014 academic year. In addition to being an honor, this will give him a small fund of money to use on job-related activities. Here we see a candid moment with Dan Graur and Steve celebrating at the dinner.