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ESI Special
Topics: December 2006
Citing URL: http://esi-topics.com/gwarm2006/interviews/EricPost.html |
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An INTERVIEW with Dr. Eric Post
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 ccording to our analysis of global warming research over the past decade, the scientist ranking at #9 is Dr. Eric Post, with a total of 417 citations. He is a coauthor on the top-ranked paper in this field, “Ecological responses to recent climate change,”
(Walther GR, et al., Nature 416[6879]:389-95, 28 March 2002). Dr. Post’s record in
Essential
Science Indicators
includes 20 papers cited a total of 1,049 times to date in the field of Environment & Ecology. Dr. Post is an Associate Professor of Biology at The Pennsylvania State University in University Park. In the interview below, he talks about his highly cited research.
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 Would
you give us some background on your education and early research?
I attended the University of Minnesota as an undergraduate. It
took me a while to settle on biology as a major field of study, but
I can trace the genesis of my career to two lectures. The first was
by Professor Harrison "Bud" Tordoff on the first day of
the first biology class I took in college. It was one of those very
general "survey" classes for non-majors. I'll never forget
the way Professor Tordoff used the first 15 minutes or so of class
that day to simply show us slide after slide after slide of all
sorts of animals. I recall him saying nothing as he advanced from
one slide to the next. There was just a vivid visual display of life
moving across the screen at the front of that enormous lecture hall.
It was a very dramatic experience, and at the end of the show
Professor Tordoff commented on how overwhelming it was to think
about the incredible diversity of life forms out there and the fact
that all of them were trying to do the same thing: survive to
reproduce. Wow. I was hooked.
Years later, in an advanced ecology course, I attended a lecture
given by Professor Don Siniff, in which he showed slides documenting
his research on population ecology of mammals in the polar regions.
After that lecture, I approached Professor Siniff and told him I
absolutely had to go to the Arctic to do research. He was very
helpful in getting me accepted into the graduate program at the
University of Alaska, the only institution I wanted to attend after
Minnesota.
My doctoral research at the University of Alaska focused on
behavioral ecology and population dynamics of caribou in relation to
resource dynamics and predation. At the time, I had little awareness
of climate change and its importance in arctic ecosystems. However,
that changed as soon as I took on a post-doctoral position at the
University of Oslo, where it became the central focus of my
research.
What
do you consider the main focus of your research?
My research focuses on ecological effects of climate change. I
try to take the approach that the responses you see at the ecosystem
level, or even beyond that, ultimately boil down to the responses of
individual organisms to variation in the biotic and abiotic
environments. One of the most intriguing aspects of studying climate
change is trying to make the connection between large-scale
environmental changes like global warming and responses by
individuals in local populations.
Several
of your papers make use of or mention the North Atlantic Oscillation.
Would you explain for the uninitiated what this is and how you use it
in your work?
The North Atlantic Oscillation, or NAO, is simply a fluctuation
in atmospheric mass balance between two so-called pressure centers
over the northern Atlantic Ocean. You could think of it as a seesaw
of pressure between those two centers that fluctuates on many time
scales, from days, to seasons, to decades. Depending on where the
balance of high pressure lies, the NAO can act as a corridor that
shunts westerly winds from the Gulf of Mexico to northern Europe,
affecting winter temperatures and the balance of precipitation and
evaporation over land in North America and Northern Europe.
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“One of the most intriguing aspects of studying climate change is trying to make the connection between large-scale environmental changes like global warming and responses by individuals in local populations.” |
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We use the NAO as an index of large-scale climatic variation and
change in our analyses of vertebrate population dynamics and spatial
patterns of population synchrony. It’s a useful way of testing for
responses of local populations to large-scale changes in climate,
and for investigating spatial variation at the continental scale in
how different populations of the same species respond to climate
change. As an integrative index, the NAO also gives us a tool for
looking at responses of organisms to changes in a whole suite of
abiotic conditions that are expected to be altered by climate
change.
Many
of your studies involve the effects of climate change on animal
populations. Is there a unifying trend here in terms of global
warming, i.e., have all the populations you've studied been affected
in similar ways?
This is one of the most important questions we try to address. If
populations within species responded similarly to climate change, we
would have great predictive capacity to foresee responses of species
to climate change. That would be useful in a management or
conservation context. However, we’ve found it’s more complicated
than that. Populations show an array of responses to warming. Some
increase, some decline. This in itself then becomes an interesting
subject for research. What factors influence whether a population
increases or declines as the Earth gets warmer?
If
you are free to discuss them, please tell us about your current
projects.
We’ve just completed the fifth year of a large-scale field
experiment in which we’re investigating the manner in which
herbivory by large mammals influences the response of arctic
vegetation and ecosystem processes to climatic warming. The site of
this experiment, in West Greenland, is also the site for which we’ve
got long-term (i.e., century-scale) data on caribou population
dynamics that have been the focus of many of our analytical studies
of population response to climate change. By conducting our field
experiment there, we are attempting to couple our long-term
time-series analyses with a detailed field investigation of an
entire ecosystem. This, we hope, will shed light on not only how
animal populations are influenced by climate change, but also on how
the plant species and communities they interact with are in turn
influenced by animal responses to climate change. A primary reason
for undertaking this investigation is that, especially in the
Arctic, there is potential for important feedbacks between tundra
vegetation and climate dynamics. In other words, climate change may
influence animals, which influence vegetation, which in turn
influences climate. It’s very exciting.
Eric Post, Ph.D.
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA, USA
| Dr. Eric Post's
most-cited paper with 451 cites to date: |
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Walther GR, et
al., "Ecological responses to recent climate
change," Nature 416(6879): 389-95, 28 March
2002. |
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Source:
Essential Science Indicators |
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ESI Special
Topics: December 2006
Citing URL: http://esi-topics.com/gwarm2006/interviews/EricPost.html
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