University of Montana Researchers Featered in National Geographic

For the second month in a row, National Geographic http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ magazine features University of Montana researchers examining crucial changes in ecosystems from the Arctic to coastal Russia.

The September 2009 issue includes the research of Joel Berger, John J. Craighead Chair and professor of wildlife conservation in UM’s Division of Biological Sciences. The August 2009 issue focuses on the work of UM Bierman Professor of Ecology Jack Stanford, director of the Flathead Lake Biological Station.

“University of Montana researchers are working at the cutting edge of science,” said Daniel Dwyer, UM vice president for research and development. “It is great to see their work presented in such a well-read publication as National Geographic so that the general public can learn about the fantastic work they are doing.”

Berger, also a National Geographic grant winner, tracks Alaska’s musk ox with GPS as fears arise among conservationists that climate change could endanger the 800-pound Ice Age survivors. Berger seeks to find where the animals – which inhabit the upper reaches of Canada, Greenland and Alaska – might be vulnerable and why. Room to roam, Berger said, is crucial to the species’ survival.

Berger was named the first Craighead Chair in wildlife biology after a career at the University of Nevada, Reno, and after working as a senior scientist for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society. Berger has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and five books, including “The Better to Eat You With: Fear in the Animal World” from the University of Chicago Press.

Further UM research work that made the pages of National Geographic focuses on the role of salmon in northeastern Russia’s coastal ecosystems.

In the August 2009 feature “Where the Salmon Rule,” Stanford and his Russian colleague, Kirill Kuzishchin, examine the importance of Pacific salmon in the Kol River ecosystem on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

At least 20 percent of the Pacific’s wild salmon population returns to the peninsula to spawn each year, but human activities threaten the salmon’s already difficult run upstream. Stanford and his team sample nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous that salmon bring to freshwater ecosystems from the ocean.

The salmon die after spawning, distributing nutrients in streambeds that will help even the surrounding trees. “If you harvest all your fish, you cannot have a productive system,” Stanford says in the feature.

“Where the Salmon Rule” is available online at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/08/kamchatka-salmon/quammen-text.

Stanford has conducted research at the biological station since 1971, serving as director for the past three decades. Although his research takes him all over the world, he holds a special affinity for Montana and Canada’s Crown of the Continent ecosystem, where he has worked on everything from microbes to grizzly bears.