Major personnel and program changes have occurred at Cedar Creek Natural History Area LTER project during the past 6 months. Richard Inouye (a post-doc who joined the project in June 1982, left in October), and Nancy Huntly (a post doctoral researcher since 1982) have accepted positions at Idaho State University. Both are planning to return to Cedar Creek for the 1987 summer field season. John Pastor is now full-time at the Natural Resource Research Institute, University of Minnesota, Duluth, and will no longer have part-time support on the LTER project: he expects to remain involved in the research program. Several members of the original Cedar Creek LTER team have left for new endeavors: graduate students M. Cowan, J. Brokaw, and K. Zinnel; data manager R. Buck, and soil chemist C. Maddox.
These vacancies have created opportunities for new scientists to join the LTER project or expand their LTER efforts. David Grigal (professor of soil science at UM) has initiated major research on soil and vegetation dynamics in upland, forested regions of the Cedar Creek landscape and become a co-PI. Eville Gorham (professor of ecology at UM) has also joined the project to begin studies of soil and vegetation dynamics along the wetland-upland ecocline this coming spring. A new post-doe interested in the controls of below-ground production, Scott Gleeson, will perform greenhouse and field studies to quantify relations between primary productivity and carbon allocation to roots, stems and leaves across the successional sequence at Cedar Creek. Another new post-doc, Don Zak (currently finishing at Michigan State) will join the project in March 1987. Don is interested in controls of the nitrogen cycle and in the possibility of competition for nitrogen between nitrifying bacteria and vascular plants. Abderrahman El Haddi joined the project in August to fill our data manager and soil chemist positions. He rings to the project skills in statistics, microcomputers, and soil science. New graduate students a Cedar Creek include: Martha Phillips (ecology of wetlands); Nancy Johnson (mycorrhizai fungi); and Anne Hairston (remote sensing to monitor forest production patterns).
We are delighted that two major papers have been accepted by Ecology (Succession on a Minnesota sandplain, by Inouye, Huntly, Tilman, Tester, Stillwell and Zinnel; and Secondary succession and the pattern of plant dominance along experimental nitrogen gradients, by Tilman). Moreover, papers on small mammal dynamics, on insects, on gophers and soil dynamics, on nitrogen mineralization, and on mechanisms of competition have recently been accepted by Ecology, Oecologia, Olkos, Holarctic Ecology, Journal of Mammology, and American Naturalist. Dave Tilman is excited and considerably relieved having just finished a book draft (possible Princeton Monograph) that combines Cedar Creek data and new theory to explore possible causes of some major patterns within plant communities and across biomes.