A Syracuse University professor of biology recently received funding from the National Parks Service to continue climate change research in the Smoky Mountains.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park — which runs along the North Carolina-Tennessee border — contains unique ecological terrain. The peaks of the Smoky Mountains are considered a cloud forest and those tropical-like areas frequently receive heavy rainfall.

The parks service funding of about $107,000 in 2019 and 2020 will be used by Jason Fridley, the SU biology professor, to study the possible effects of climate change in the area.

The Daily Orange spoke with Fridley to discuss his research and the recent funding announcement.

The Daily Orange: What made you choose this field?

Jason Fridley: It was a combination of being predisposed as a young person to really enjoy the outdoors, with a curiosity about science and school.

What really propelled me into this particular field of ecology and plant ecology — figuring out what plants do in nature — was I had a very strong mentor when I was in college who was also an ecologist. He took me under his wing. I did a lot of research with him as an undergraduate, went to some conferences and thought, “this seems like a really nice way to make a living.”

The D.O.: How did you receive your funding?

J.F.: This funding in particular was through a long-term relationship with the National Parks Service staff. When I was a postdoc, I did a project in the park that helped produce a map of temperatures. It was a lot of work, a lot of hiking, but it was one of the greatest jobs ever.

We were able to do a big spatial analysis using a lot of geographic information systems to create these really detailed maps of temperature. The parks service (is) really supportive of the work and they have used it a lot.

I originally tried to join forces with another researcher at Duke University: Ana Barros. She is working on a similar thing, but from a different angle. She works above the canopy. She is interested how trees create their own rainfall, which is something I don’t know much about.

She can produce maps of what’s going on above the canopy, and I can translate that to below the canopy.

The D.O.: Why did you choose the Great Smoky Mountains to conduct your research?

J.F.: It has to do with the decision way back when, when I was doing my postdoc. The main reason is that it has been a very famous place to do ecology since the 1950s. That’s because a very famous researcher, Robert Whittaker … he did all kinds of things with biology. He did his dissertation work in the park. (That work) was famous for rejecting the idea that plants arrange themselves in discrete communities. Plants work in a gradient, in a continuum.

He went to the Smoky Mountains because there are very extreme gradients. You go from the coldest weather to the warmest weather in a half days’ worth of hiking. There are these extreme gradients, so it’s a convenient place to survey plants.

The D.O.: What exactly will you be researching?

J.F.: I will be trying to figure out how the temperature and moisture at the scale of the ground — something like a salamander or wildflower might care about — how the temperature and water availability will change at really fine spatial scales. And, then, how might that be sensitive to global warming.

The D.O.: How will you be conducting your research?

J.F.: We have an array of different sensors, basically thermometers, hooked up to a computer that stores data for long periods of time. These particular thermometers are about the size of a nickel. Inside is a thermometer and a memory stick that records the temperature every few hours.

The D.O.: What past research have you done to prepare for this?

J.F.: It has been a couple of years now, trying to get this project going. The basic idea of that research was to collect the data and do this massive data analysis — kind of applied statistics. Part of it was creating models and part of it was mapping the output onto a landscape.

The D.O.: What are you hoping to discover?

J.F.: We are trying to figure out which parts of the landscape might change the most if you warm up the atmosphere. There is good reason to believe that parts of the park won’t change that much because it is too wet. It would be like trying to heat up a wet towel.

If the forests dry out or if the precipitation dries out, then it will warm up much faster.

Published on February 19, 2018 at 7:56 pm

Contact Olivia: olcole@syr.edu