Crow Soil Ecology & Biogeochemistry Lab

Congratulations to Ph.D. student Jon Wells for his recognition as the NREM Best PhD Student Oral Presentation on “Differential effects of lignin chemistry on conversion”.  Jon wrote that ‘”Global interest in renewable fuels is rapidly growing as the need for local and sustainable energy increases. In Hawaiʻi, local energy growth and creating new energy sources, specifically liquid fuels, are of high priority.  To this end, the structural properties of 12 potential biomass feedstock grasses were investigated to facilitate feedstock crop choice for two bioenergy conversion pathways: 1) anaerobic digestion (AD), and 2) hot water pretreatment followed by enzyme hydrolysis (HWP).”  He concluded “Selecting more readily convertible crops, with favorable lignin chemistry, could lead to an improvement of conversion efficiency by 2-5% and may prove to be a simple and effective way to select and screen feedstocks to improve the outlook of bioenergy production in the state.”  Jon also presented this work last year at the 25th Annual EUBCE 2017 conference.

Thrilled to have Chris Field join the UH Manoa community this week and so appreciative of his time and insights on solutions to a complex problem during a chaotic moment in history.

Annika Little received her B.S. in NREM in December, thank you for your dedication to your work in the Crow Lab over the years.  From internship to independent research and writing intensive course work, it was fantastic to see the outcome of Annika’s hard work and research results all the way from inception to completion.  Enjoy the post-graduation down time and best wishes in all your future endeavors.

Best wishes to Steven Leone on his new adventures in Colorado.  Thank you for your dedication to the machete, web site, and novel sensor network for the deep soil warming project.  A hui hou!

Asks the Science Journal for Kids, on our behalf.  This amazing outreach resource just completed the transformation of the thesis work of Meghan Pawlowski (Lind), first published in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE.  Using the high school AP Environmental Science curriculum as their guide, this team translated our tech talk into an accessible format ready for teachers and students! Here is the link to our paper, check it out!

Christine and Casey represent the Crow Lab in the Manoa Christmas parade by marching with their Be Ready Manoa disaster preparedness group.

Hannah and Genelle successfully defended their research proposals last week – congratulations! Genelle’s research is titled “Community-based management of mangrove forests in Pemba East Africa”.  Hannah is working “Towards a Hawaii soil health index: Indicator development for soil health and carbon sequestration potential and application of farmer perspectives”.  Both projects are based in social-ecological principles of natural resource management, we look forward to the results of their hard work.

Hannah kicks of her field campaign to collect agricultural and unmanaged soils for initial research to develop a Soil Health Index and Indicator of Carbon Sequestration Potential for Hawaii!  Congratulations, and thank you to her field assistants and the farmers!

Students will contribute to building a soil carbon knowledge hub, database, and visualization tool in development for the USGS Powell Center Working Group, What lies below?

Hawaii Public Radio short on our recent papers about the role healthy soils can play in mitigating climate change.