From the old to the new

After a very warm summer, we here at SEAL are glad that Fall (term) has finally started, especially because that hopefully means we’ll see some cooler temperatures. And as always, the beginning of term ushers in a new suite of changes, from the sudden appearance of thousands of students on campus again to the choices made for which remaining classes we have to take.

Aside from normal university changes, we have two big changes here in our lab. The first is that we are officially saying goodbye to Laura this month! :( After successfully defending her thesis earlier this summer, she has still hung around North Carolina while starting her new job remotely, which allowed us to see her. That time is coming to a close, though, as she will be making the final move out to California soon. Of course, we couldn’t let her go without doing a group lab get-together with some song and brownies!

On the flip side, this Fall marks an increase in the SEAL family! This term we welcome Grace, coming to us after a Master’s of Environmental Management at Duke University. She will be helping Josh with a new project investigating global, long-term phenology variability using MODIS. Specifically, the project will be focusing on phenology changes over the MODIS era (since 2000), phenology trends and their impact on seasonal carbon fluxes, and using phenology to characterize how droughts are affecting ecosystems. Grace will be an integral part of the research team, and we know she will do well! She is already taking her first classes and getting used to the new classes and CGA structure with her new cohort.

This past weekend, we had a full lab get together to celebrate both Laura’s leaving and Grace’s onboarding. Here’s to more full lab pictures and events in the near future!

In some quick other news, Ian successfully presented his research at the Ecological Society of America (ESA) conference in Montreal in mid-August, and he will be presenting a poster soon at the Forest Disturbance and Ecosystem Dynamics Symposium near Munich, Germany. Looking ahead, a number of us at SEAL (and CGA in general) are planning to attend the AGU conference in Chicago this year. We just need to receive the confirmation emails first!