Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Interesting Papers: Inadvertant management, dissolved organic matter in large rivers, and other cool studies

  • Sometimes management with the best intentions can result in active detriment to an intended beneficiary.  Take this example of supplemental feeding for a European eagle:  The supplemental feed contained pharmaceuticals, so the eagles that were given the supplemental feed were actually worse off than those who weren't. 
  • I haven't read this paper on DOM dynamics in large rivers yet.  But I wouldn't exactly be true to my dissertation work if I didn't get it read in the next couple of days.  I'm not aware of other studies that have followed the dynamics of DOM in such a large system with anything like this kind of detail, so this seems like it could be very interesting.
  • I don't often see social and economic studies in the journals I follow, but this study on the cost and distribution of benefits associated with heat relief is fascinating.  I think environmental justice is a really interesting topic (I'd love to teach a course on this) and this paper is a perfect example of how it fits in with ecosystems services.
  • I don't usually dig through Nature or Science directly, but last week's Nature Podcast made me realize I'd missed an essay co-authored by one of my favorite researchers, Jim Elser.  The essay is about peak phosphorus and I think it is fascinating that nobody, or at least almost nobody talks about phosphorus in the mass media.  I kinda wonder if we'll solve this problem more efficiently and effectively because it isn't a popular press story, as opposed to the other big biogeochemical problems (our over-production of C and N). 
  • In case anyone was wondering, here's the list of journals that show up in my feed reader.  You won't see Nature or Science on there, because the number of things those journals put into their feeds are just overwhelming, and much of it isn't very interesting to an ecologist (not that I'm just an ecologist).  I keep up with the Nature and Science stuff from the podcasts and word of mouth.  I also get L&O's table of contents delivered to my inbox.  I'd like to get the Journal of Great Lakes Research easily, but every time I subscribe to the feed, I end up getting every journal published by their publishing company.  I also get Frontiers in print, because it comes with the membership to ESA.  Anyway, if your article comes out in one of these journals, and I randomly think it looks cool, I'll try to mention it here:
    • Oecologia
    • Journal of Ecology
    • Fundamental and Applied Limnology
    • AFS Transactions
    • Biogeochemistry
    • Hydrobiologia
    • Environmental Science and Technology
    • Aquatic Sciences
    • NABS (actually NABS is now the Society for Freshwater Science...not sure if I updated the feed or not!)
    • Freshwater Biology
    • Functional Ecology
    • Journal of Animal Ecology
    • Ecology
    • Ecology Letters
    • Aquatic Ecology
    • Proceedings of the National Academies of Science
    • Proceedings of the Royal Society (B)
    • Oikos


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