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N ICHOLAS S CHOOL OF THE E NVIRONMENT AND E ARTH S CIENCES
dukenvironment Spring
species in trouble
Seeking out the ‘Hottest of the Hot Spots’
2003
An Environment for Solutions

dukenvironment is a publication of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University.
Administration
William H. Schlesinger, Dean
Richard B. Forward Jr., Chair, Division of Coastal Systems Science & Policy
Peter K. Haff, Chair, Division of Earth & Ocean Sciences
Curtis J. Richardson, Chair, Division of Environmental Sciences & Policy
Michael K. Orbach, Director, Duke University Marine Laboratory
Peggy Dean Glenn, Associate Dean, External Affairs
James Haggard, Associate Dean, Finance and Administration
Laura Turcotte, Administrative Assistant to the Dean
Office of External Affairs
Peggy Dean Glenn, Associate Dean
Scottee Cantrell, Director of Communications
Anita Brown, Director of Advancement
Krista Bofill, Director of Alumni Affairs and the Annual Fund
Eric Miller, Director of Foundation and Corporate Relations
Carol Dahm, Assistant Director of Alumni Affairs and the Annual Fund
Rita M. Baur, Office Manager and Director of Special Events
Board of Visitors
Simon B. Rich Jr., Edenton, NC (Chair)
Marshall Field V, Old Mountain Company, Chicago, IL (Vice Chair)
Lawrence B. Benenson, The Benenson Capital Company, New York, NY
Richard H. Bierly, Morehead City, NC (Ex Officio)
Ann Douglas Cornell, Wallace Genetic Foundation, Washington, DC
Timothy J. Creem, Bridgton, ME
Michael C. Farrar, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC
F. Daniel Gabel Jr., Hagedorn & Company, New York, NY
Harvey Goldman, Syska Hennessy Group Inc., New York, NY
Lyons Gray, Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership, Winston-Salem, NC
Gilbert M. Grosvenor, National Geographic Society, Washington, DC
John S. Hahn, Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, Washington, DC
Richard G. Heintzelman, Janney Montgomery Scott, Allentown, PA
George C. Hixon, Hixon Properties Inc., San Antonio, TX
Christian R. Holmes IV, Shell Center for Sustainability, Houston, TX
Richard E. Hug, Environmental Elements Corporation, Baltimore, MD
(Emeritus)
Thomas C. Jorling, International Paper, Stamford, CT
Sally S. Kleberg, Kleberg/ESPY Interests, New York, NY
Juanita M. Kreps, Duke University, Durham, NC (Emerita)
James B. Miller, USDA Forest Service, Washington, DC (Ex Officio)
Bettye Martin Musham, GEAR Holdings Inc., New York, NY
J.K. Nicholas, Northpoint Domain, Boston, MA
Patrick F. Noonan, The Conservation Fund, Arlington, VA
Elizabeth B. Reid, Bedford Hills, NY (Emerita)
John C. Reid, Curtis Reid Enterprises, LLC, Larchmont, NY
Douglass F. Rohrman, Lord, Bissell & Brook, Chicago, IL
Truman T. Semans, Brown Investment Advisory and Trust Company,
Baltimore, MD (Emeritus)
Truman T. Semans Jr., GLOBE-USA, Charlotte, NC
Bartow S. Shaw Jr., American Forest Management Inc., Sumter, SC
Thomas A. Shepherd, MFG Inc., Fort Collins, CO
Ronald J. Slinn, Slinn & Associates, Princeton, NJ (Emeritus)
Wayne F. Wilbanks, Wilbanks, Smith & Thomas Asset Management, LLC,
Norfork, VA (Ex Officio)
Robert L. Wood, Dow Chemical Co., Midland, MI
George M. Woodwell, The Woods Hole Research Center, Woods Hole, MA
Marine Lab Advisory Board
Wayne F. Wilbanks, Wilbanks, Smith & Thomas Asset Management, LLC,
Norfolk, VA (Chair)
Elsa Ayers, Greensboro, NC (Vice Chair)
James H.P. Bailey Jr., Cape Lookout Marine Inc., Atlantic Beach, NC
Richard H. Bierly, Morehead City, NC
Charles F. Blanchard, Blanchard, Jenkins, Miller & Lewis PA, Raleigh, NC
David S. Brody, Kinston, NC
F. Nelson Blount Crisp, Blount & Crisp, Greenville, NC
Hugh Cullman, Beaufort, NC
Sylvia A. Earle, Deep Ocean Exploration & Research, Oakland, CA
Robert W. Estill, Raleigh, NC
John T. Garbutt Jr., Durham, NC
Cecil Goodnight, Wake Forest, NC
C. Howard Hardesty Jr., Vero Beach, FL
Robert G. Hardy, Cornerstone Ventures LP, Houston, TX
Mary Price Taylor Harrison, Raleigh, NC
Susan Hudson, Wilson, NC
Sandra Taylor Kaupe, Palm Beach, FL
William A. Lane Jr., The Dunspaugh-Dalton Foundation Inc., Coral Gables, FL
Henry O. Lineberger Jr., Raleigh, NC
J. Thomas McMurray, Washington, DC
Stephen E. Roady, Earthjustice, Washington, DC
Katherine Goodman Stern, Greensboro, NC
Elizabeth Thrower, Vero Beach, FL, and Nantucket, MA
Stephen A. Wainwright, Duke University, Durham, NC
Alumni Council
James B. Miller, USDA Forest Service, Washington, DC (President)
William E.S. Cleveland, Shreveport, LA
D. Jefferson Dye, Jefferson Dye & Associates, LLC, New Orleans, LA
Peter C. Griffith, Goddard Spaceflight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Lynne Hawkes, MEM '88, Natural Resource Ecology, Alumni Council
Robert Beerits Lyon Jr., The Link Oil Company, Tulsa, OK
Daniel Markewitz, Daniel B. Warnell School of Forest Resources,
Athens, GA
Nancy Ragland Perkins, Office of Sen. Judd Gregg (NH), Washington, DC
James A. Spangler, Spangler Environmental Consultants Inc., Raleigh, NC
Lori A. Sutter, NOAA Coastal Services Center, Charleston, SC
Michael Dechter, MEM '03, Resource Economics and Policy
(Student Ex Officio)
Alexis Kingham, MEM '04, Coastal Environmental Management
(Student Ex Officio)
Editorial Board
Judson (Judd) Edeburn, Resource Manager, Duke Forest
Peter K. Haff, Chair, Division of Earth & Ocean Sciences
Patrick N. Halpin, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Landscape Ecology
Lynne Hawkes, MEM '88, Natural Resource Ecology, Alumni Council
Karen Kirchof, Director of Career Services
Randall A. Kramer, Professor of Resource and Environmental Economics
Michael K. Orbach, Director of the Duke University Marine Laboratory,
and Professor of the Practice of Marine Affairs and Policy
Cynthia Peters, Director of Enrollment Services
Donna Picard, Staff Assistant, Office of the Dean
Clair Twigg, MEM '03, Water & Air Resources
Rachel Strader, MEM '04, Coastal Environmental Management

dukenvironment Contents
2 Species in Trouble
Stuart Pimm and His Students Seek Out the ‘Hottest of the Hot Spots’ in Their Efforts to Stem Global Loss of Biodiversity
12 Loggerhead Crisis Brewing?
Surprising Study Results Show More Females Than Males Hatching in Northern Population
15 Secret Life of Waves
Duke Researchers Are Finding That the Waves We Never See May Play a Big Role in Shaping the Planet
6 The Log: School News
18 Forum: Dean’s Page
19 Action: Student News
Living a Double Life: For Six Months of the Year, Grad Student Luke Dollar Trades Number
Crunching in Durham for a Chance to Track the Elusive Fossa in Madagascar
22 Scope: Faculty & Staff Notes
25 Sightings: Alumni News
28 Nature & Nurture: Campaign & Annual Fund News
32 Monitor: Upcoming Events
Produced by the Office of Creative Services & Publications,
Duke University Health System, MCOC 3206
Copyright © Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, 2003
Photography contributed by Scott Taylor, Scott Taylor Photography, Beaufort, N.C.;
Luke Dollar, Nicholas School; Jim Wallace and Chris Hildreth, Duke University Photography;
Judson Edeburn, Office of The Duke Forest; Lisa Dellwo Schlesinger, Durham, N.C.; Stuart Pimm, Nicholas School;
Col. Bob Powell; and Jimmy Wood, Jimmy Wood Photography, Sumter, S.C.

COVER STORY
species in trouble
Stuart Pimm and His Students Seek Out the ‘Hottest of the Hot Spots’ in Their Efforts to Stem Global Loss of Biodiversity
by Monte Basgall
As he bustles through the Nicholas School’s
corridors carrying papers and files,
or hunches over his computer doing
sophisticated modeling, or begins yet
another trouble-shooting, problem-solving
trip with his students to Southern Africa,
Brazil, Southeast Asia, Central America,
Florida’s Everglades, or Washington, D.C.,
Stuart Pimm telegraphs the feeling that
he’s in the right place at the right time.
“I think Duke affords such a wonderful
opportunity,” said Pimm, the school’s
peripatetic Doris Duke Chair of
Conservation Ecology. “I’m in the School
of the Environment, and that’s very much
the way I want it to be. We’re not just
interested in doing science for science’s
sake,” he said in one of several interviews.
“The hottest of the hot spots are the places
we work. We are looking for places that are
tough and difficult, where we, as hopefully
smart scientists, can bring some important
ideas to the table.”
Pimm is sitting in his high-ceilinged
office, a converted sunroom where
Nicholas School students used to gather.
Students still parade in and out, only
they’re now his own graduate students, a
number of whom have followed him to
Duke from Columbia University, some
even from his previous years at the
dukenvironment
University of Tennessee. On Pimm’s office
wall, across from a potted palm tree that
thrives in the ample light, is a special world
map. It highlights places, mostly in the tropics,
where species are considered to be in trouble,
mostly from the actions of humans. These,
he says, are the “hot spots” — “not just the
places where species are born, but also
where species are dying.”
His Nicholas School Web site (http://www.
env.duke.edu/faculty/bios/pimm.html)
notes that his expertise “lies in species
extinctions and what can be done to
prevent them.” He likewise “studies the loss
of tropical forests and its consequences to
biodiversity.” You can read lots more about
his approach to population biology in his
2001 book, The World According to Pimm, published
a year before he arrived at Duke. Its
285 pages take readers on a worldwide hot
spot tour and also measure the world’s
assets. Readers may be startled by how many
assets are being diverted to human use.
His book’s final page, “About the
Author,” notes that he’s written more than
150 scientific papers, numerous articles for
general audiences, and a total of three
books. It also notes his extensive media
exposure. For many scientists, “being an
2
advocate is really a dirty word,” he said. But
Pimm believes that talking to reporters as
well as politicians is a crucial part of his
efforts to save the natural world from
deforestation and land conversion, overhunting
and overfishing, excessive extraction
of water resources and air and water
pollution. “Am I being an advocate when I
go to Capitol Hill and talk to the media?
The answer is no!” he exclaims in his
Derbyshire, England accent. “I think the
severity of the ecological crises that we face
requires us to do that.”
Pimm hails from “the countryside of All
Creatures Great and Small,” he said. “It was a
wonderful place to grow up as a naturalist,
with lots of hiking trails. His parents
included camping in every holiday. And
“my interests in the outdoors, which I
shared with my parents, really came through
watching birds,” he said. Sick at home on
his 12th birthday, Pimm viewed a television
show on birdwatching. When he got better,
“The idea is to use elephants to choose corridors that
are not only politically but ecologically viable”
he sleuthed out birds with a classmate and
“was completely hooked,” he said.
His youthful hobby grew into a lifelong
avocation as he was introduced to ecology
during undergraduate years at Oxford
University and graduate school at

New Mexico State University. He chose
New Mexico for graduate study because two
summers in Afghanistan had piqued an
interest in desert ecology. After graduating
he was ready for research experiences in a
variety of settings — be they deserts, mountains
or remote tropical rain forests — as
long as they were pristine. I felt as an
ecologist that was where I would learn
how nature should work,” he said. “So
I definitely remember thinking I would
never go to Hawai`i, because it had been
so severely damaged.”
Although tourists may think otherwise,
Hawai`i has been so ecologically manipulated
by humans that much of the original ecology
has been extirpated. But, at a crucial
moment, he went there anyway, as an
extension of a research project studying
organizational patterns of southwestern
U.S. hummingbird communities. A fellow
researcher told him of several species of
Hawaiian honeycreepers that were organized
the same way. So Pimm went to
Hawai`i, and it changed his life.
Back in the 1970s, “I don’t think we had
a word yet for ‘conservation biology,’” he
said. “Conservationists were advocates,
something other people did.” But in
Hawai`i “I realized that 50 years from now
people would not look back on my papers
in Science and Nature. They would say, ‘Pimm
you were on duty in Hawai`i when those
species went extinct. You let it happen!’
It touched on ethical and religious
concerns, the idea that as a scientist not
only did I have a responsibility, but that
there was something I could do about it.”
The Society of Conservation Biology was
finally founded in the early 1980s. “From
that meeting on, I knew what I was,”
he said.
After previous stints on the faculties of
Clemson and Texas Tech universities,
Pimm went to the University of Tennessee,
Knoxville in 1982 as an assistant professor
in the department of ecology and evolutionary
biology. He would stay in Knoxville
for 17 years, rising to full professor and
seeing his department reorganized as an
ecology department in its own right. But in
the end, Pimm was getting restless.
“I really wanted to work in a more
explicitly interdisciplinary group, recognizing
that we also had to speak the language
of economics, had to understand social
sciences, had to have remote sensing skills,
and had to understand the geological background
of the areas we are working in,” he says.
So Pimm relocated to Columbia University
in 1999 as a professor of ecology at the
Center for Research and Conservation,
taking some of his graduate students with
him. “I expected to stay at Columbia for a
long time,” he said. “My reasons for
coming to the Nicholas School have an
enormous amount to do with how attractive
the program here is.”
photo captions are from left to right, top to bottom: 1. Jaguar in water 2. and 3. Deforestation in North Sumatra 4. Madagascar buzzard (Buteo brachypterus)
5. Stuart Pimm in his Nicholas School office 6. Rain forest frog 7. Slash and burn agriculture
Last summer, Pimm’s group was formally
introduced to the Nicholas School at
an outdoor barbecue, his international
team of graduate students blinking in the
bright sunlight. “It’s an incredible mix,” he
says. “I have some students from Columbia.
I have some who went from Tennessee
to Columbia and are now here. One
man and his family moved three times in
three years.”
Mariana Vale has been working with
Pimm for two years and is now beginning a
doctoral research project in the Brazilian
Amazon. “I love working with Stuart,” she
said. “He’s always been very supportive of
me, and he’s an amazing scientist. He’s my
endless resource for everything.” A native
of Rio de Janeiro who finished her master’s
degree when Pimm was at Columbia, Vale
is starting to study how human alterations
to the Amazon’s delicate environment are
affecting the distribution and conservation
of perching birds.
“He has one of the most incredible
minds that I've ever encountered,” said
Luke Dollar, who studies the fearsome
fossa, Madagascar’s major predator (see
Action/Student News, page 19), as well as uses
remote sensing to document changes in
that environmentally beleaguered nation.
“He does so many different things, and
he does them all much better than the next
guy. He’s never had a graduate student he’s
not been in the field with. He’s not so

COVER STORY
much a boss or a teacher as he is an
academic father figure.”
Dalia Conde, another doctoral student
who followed Pimm to Duke from
Columbia, said “I’m really happy to work
with him because I think he is open about
working with international students and
understanding different cultures.” A
native of Mexico City, Conde spent
previous years doing conservation projects
for a non-government organization
(NGO) in Mexico.
She and another Pimm Group international
doctoral student, Fernando
Colchero, recently joined an experienced
team that captures and attaches radio collars
to jaguars. With the collars, they can
track the jaguars by satellite along jungle
corridors in the Yucatan Peninsula. “One
of the most exciting things is to have eye
contact with a wild animal such as a jaguar
in a tree in its natural ecosystem,” Conde
said. “When we went on the jaguar capture
he (Pimm) stayed with us the whole time
to see how well we were doing on our
work project.”
Conde will soon go to southern Africa
to do elephant-related research. She will
visit a “peace park” within several contiguous
nations to search for ecologically friendly
corridors that the pachyderms can
negotiate without interfering with or
being harmed by humans. “The idea is to
use elephants to choose corridors that are
dukenvironment
not only politically but ecologically
viable,” she said.
Elephant conservation is a special
challenge, says Pimm, who spends enough
time in Africa to teach at the University of
Pretoria. (He isn’t paid a salary, but some
of his expenses are covered.) “If you get
their management right, you have
elephants. If you get it really right, you
have far too many,” he quips, “and they
destroy the habitat.” On his first day
teaching his Applied Population Ecology
class at Duke, Pimm was still jet lagged
from attending the World Summit on
Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
So he showed the students a “very opinionated,
very controversial” movie on the
problems of elephant-human relations.
“At the end, I said, ‘Two weeks from now
I want you to tell me what your solution
is.’” he said.
Pimm and his students pick such
“sentinel” species to address broad issues
of people versus animals and preservation
versus environment in the growing
numbers of places that they work. Besides
Pimm and his students pick such “sentinel” species to address broad
issues of people versus animals and preservation versus environment
elephants in South Africa, jaguars in
Mexico, birds in the Amazon, and fossas
in Madagascar, there are sooty terns on
the Dry Tortugas off south Florida. “Until
about seven or eight years ago my program
was largely U.S.-based,” he said. “Then I
began to realize that just working in the
richest country in the world was not the
4
right way to do conservation. So I began
looking for opportunities to work
internationally.”
Pimm says he uses birds “as a window
into what is happening to the rest of the
environment, and with other kinds of
species. We really look at whole ecosystems,
but we tend to do this through the
window of studying birds, because we
know birds so well.”
A major sentinel species he studies in
Florida’s Everglades is the small, brown
Cape Sable Sparrow, which he describes as
“about as uncharismatic and unlovely a
bird as you can imagine. The work that we
do involves the fact that poor water management
decisions have caused the sparrow
to be flooded out of part of its range, and
burned out of another part where it’s too
dry.” Pimm might “not mention its name
for hours” as he meets with officials with
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
National Park Service and U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service. “What we may talk about
are the issues of restoring Florida’s natural
ecosystem dynamics,” he said. “If they get
those right, the sparrow will come back.”
Pimm’s goals include building a “really
good” conservation biology program at the
Nicholas School, and training an international
cadre of specialists, both PhDs and
Masters of Environmental Management
(MEMs), to address complex problems in
various countries. A major conference he
organized with Intel founder Gordon E.
Moore and Harvard biologist Edward O.
Wilson produced a paper, “Defying
Nature’s End,” that recognized the “need
to train a lot more people to tackle these
issues,” he said. “Just like politics is local,

conservation is local. So a great part of
what I do involves being with my group in
different parts of the world and showing
that they’re working with the local
communities. In all the places we work,
we have immediate, direct ties to the
policy makers and managers.”
While the Nicholas School’s MEM
program “is clearly the best professional
masters program in environmental sciences
in the country, its students are predominantly
young American women and
men,” he said. “We need to have students
coming in from other countries to get
training and go back to their countries.”
“That can’t happen without some
serious scholarship support,” stressed
Pimm, who recalls a recent Christmas card
bearing a $2,500 check for his program.
Donations that size have historically kept
the Pimm Group going, he said. “We will
probably raise $50,000 this year, the
biggest grants of which might be $5,000.
That’s something I’d like to change.” The
Nicholas School has “a wonderful group
of fund-raisers,” he says. “I’d like to build
up an endowment for getting students into
these areas each year, so that we don’t have
to live such a hand-to-mouth existence.”
All these goals explain why Pimm
always seems to be bustling. “There will be
many days this year when I’ll be up before
dawn out in the field,” he said. “There
will be other days when I’ll be in front of
congressmen trying to get the message
across.” An ecological theoretician early
in his academic career, he also logs plenty
of time in front of a computer keyboard
“as far from the forests and the jungles as
you can imagine.” Both Pimm and his
students relish the specialized technical
help available at Duke, such as the remote
sensing expertise of Dean Urban, associate
professor of landscape ecology, and
Patrick Halpin, assistant professor of
the practice of landscape ecology.
“The Nicholas School offers a wonderful
opportunity for us to pick up a broad
range of necessary skills,” he said.
It is perhaps no surprise, then, that
it took him five years to write The World
According to Pimm. Describing himself as
“a measurer of biodiversity,” Pimm said
the book is in part a way of explaining
what he does. After initially envisioning
a book for scientists, “I realized that the
state of the planet is a hugely important
subject that every educated person ought
to know about,” he said. Then he told
himself that “auditing the planet is
about as dull a subject as you could
possibly imagine.
“Yet it isn’t dull,” he finally decided.
“We have the most amazing adventures while
we’re doing it all over the world.” So he
ended up “telling it as an adventure story.”
Pimm’s book appropriately begins
aboard a helicopter, where he is being
whisked up the precipitous, vertigoinducing
slopes of the Hawaiian volcano
Haleakala to reach a cold and rainy
research camp at 6,000 feet. Readers later
learn the pros and cons of working in an
Amazon rain forest. The cons range from
“the thundershowers that drench you in
minutes” to “the shots against yellow fever;
the nauseating taste of the Lariam pills
that ward off malaria; the threat of
leishmaniasis; and the ghastliness of its
treatment if you contract it.”
With the entertainment also comes
some stark math.
Earth now has six billion humans.
Land that covers an eighth of it generates
99 percent of our food. Humans already
use up about 40 percent of the global
production of plant material. Most of the
plants we use come from tropical places
where forests are shrinking by 10 percent
per decade. About 90 percent of the
ocean is a “biological desert,” and we use
up one third of the annual production
from the remaining 10.
There are probably 10 million kinds of
animals and plants, about 10 of which
should go extinct each year according to
past “natural” attrition rates. Extinctions
are now accelerating to between 1,000 and
10,000 times the natural rate.
Monte Basgall is a senior writer with Duke’s Office
of News and Communications and specializes in
science coverage.
w w w.
web sites to note
Review of The World According to Pimm:
http://www.env.duke.edu/faculty/pimm/
pimmlabhtml/world.html
Research Group Web site:
http://www.env.duke.edu/faculty/pimm/
Stuart Pimm’s Bio:
http://www.env.duke.edu/faculty/bios/
pimm.html
photo captions are from left to right, top to bottom: 8. Pimm in the halls of the Levine Science Research Center 9. Rain forest frog 10. Aerial of Madagascar plateau
11. Indonesian deforestation 12. Rain forest frog 13. Deforestation 14. Rain forest 15. White-throated Spadebill (Platyrinchus mystaceus) 16. Lesser Woodcreeper (Lepidocolaptes
fuscus) 17. Sooty Tern (Sterna fuscata) Photos 2-4, 6&7, 9-14 by Luke Dollar; photos 5 & 8 by Jim Wallace, Duke Photography; photos 15 & 16 by Stuart Pimm; and photo 17 by Col. Bob Powell

S CHOOL N E W S the
Soon Midcareer Professionals
Can Go Online to Get MEM Degree
Even though it might advance them up the
career ladder, environmental professionals
may find it too daunting a task to leave
a job and family to go back to school for
a master’s degree or for a certificate program.
Now, through a “first of its kind”
program at the Nicholas School, they can
get what they need largely while sitting at
their home computers.
Beginning this fall, the Nicholas
School will begin taking applications
for the Duke Environmental Leadership
(DEL) Program, which will offer a variety
of online and site-based educational
opportunities
for midcareer
professionals
with an emphasis
on interdisciplinary
themes,
strategic
approaches to
environmental
management,
communication
and effective
leadership.
The program
will revolve
around the 30credit
Master of
Environmental
Management
option (DEL-
MEM), but the
Camille Heaton MEM’98
poses for DEL brochure
web sites to note
Rob Jackson’s op-ed:
http://www.env.duke.edu/news/jacksonsaddamshivers.html
Orbach’s Revelle presentation:
http://www.env.duke.edu/news/Freedom
oftheSeas.pdf
dukenvironment
log
school also will offer a variety of 10-credit
certificate programs and one-to threecredit
short courses. Classes are scheduled
to begin in mid-2004.
“Accessibility is one of the most
daunting challenges to mid-career
environmental training,” said Norman L.
Christensen Jr., DEL executive director.
“Through the DEL program the Nicholas
School will offer its comprehensive
environmental management program to
those potential students who may not be
able to spend two years in residence to get
a degree and will provide continuing
education for those that can’t leave home
to get it.”
Admission to the 30-credit DEL-
MEM program will be based on undergraduate
performance, GRE scores and
work experience. Five years of relevant
work experience is a prerequisite for the
program. Students will be expected to
complete a one-week orientation session
at the Duke campus; a series of threecredit
core and focused modular courses
or short courses; and a masters project
that should allow students to pursue
problems directly related to their current
employment, said Sara Ashenburg, director
of continuing and executive education.
Proposed modular core courses —
available in written and electronic formats
— include Ecosystems Science and
Management, Environmental and Natural
Resource Economics, Environmental
Policy and Law and Program Management
for Environmental Professionals.
6
With the exception of the orientation
course, core courses and the masters
project, all DEL courses will be available
for single course enrollment by students
with an appropriate bachelor’s degree and
who meet any course pre-requisites,
Ashenburg said. Students enrolling in
three courses (10 credits) in particular
focal areas will qualify for certificates.
Certificate areas might include conservation
biology, water quality assessment or
natural resource economics.
The DEL faculty team includes
Christensen, professor of ecology and
former dean of the Nicholas School,
Patrick Halpin, assistant professor of
the practice of landscape ecology, Robert
Healy, professor of resource economics,
Randall Kramer, professor of resource
economics, Lynn Maguire, associate
professor of the practice of environmental
science and policy, and Dean Urban,
associate professor of landscape ecology.
The program is supported by an
$800,000 grant from the Henry Luce
Foundation.
For enrollment information,
contact the DEL program office at
(919) 613-8063 or del@duke.edu.
w w w.
web sites to note
Check out the program Web site at
http://www.env.duke.edu/del.
w w w.
Web Notes
Check out Rob’s Jackson’s Op-Ed
In an op-ed for the News & Observer in Raleigh, Rob Jackson talks about what war in Iraq
and an ice storm in North Carolina have in common. Jackson, associate professor of
biology, is director of Duke University’s Program in Ecology in the Nicholas School of the
Environment and Earth Sciences and author of the new book The Earth Remains Forever.
You can read “Give Saddam the shivers and save, too” online at http://www.env.duke.edu/
news/jackson-saddamshivers.html

S CHOOL N E W S
Former CEO Tackles Teaching for the First
Time; Seeks Solutions to Questions about
Energy and the Environment
Former CEO Simon Rich has never stood
at the head of a classroom before, but
when he was asked to teach a course in the
Nicholas School on energy and the
environment, a topic he’s been pondering
since he began his own career, he couldn’t
resist the challenge of taking what he
sees as some critical concerns before
Duke students.
Over the years, as Rich has gained
experience in agriculture and energy
products, he has grown increasingly aware
of and concerned about the limits on oil
and gas production and what those limits
might mean to a country whose food chain
is so dependent on petroleum products.
Rich began his career as manager of a
family commercial farm and last served as
chairman of Louis Dreyfus Natural Gas.
“I began to understand the lack of sustainability
of our global energy program,”
he said. “But I didn’t have the answers.”
Teaching offered him an opportunity
to continue a search for them. “It is
intriguing, because I thought if I could
prompt people to ask the questions —
people a lot smarter than I am and a lot
younger than I am — hopefully we will
come up with answers,” he said.
Tackling questions about energy and
the environment this spring semester are
15 graduate students from the Nicholas
School’s Masters in Environmental
Management program, Duke Law School,
and Fuqua School of Business, and three
Duke undergraduates.
Rich is very pleased with the mix of
the class because he feels the diversity of
the students will add to the richness of
the debate.
“I purposely picked the time period
for the class to be three hours at one sitting
because what I want to do is introduce
them to what I’m calling catalysts — topics
where you can take one side or the other
of the issue,” he said. “I’ve broken the
class up into small groups and very frequently
they are going to be giving presentations
that will trigger discussions.”
Guest speakers have included Matt
Simmons, president of Simmons & Co.
International, who discussed “Oil & Gas:
The Supply Demands Facts”; Ronnie
Irani, executive vice president of
Dominion Exploration, who discussed
“Finding Oil and Gas”; and Susan Ruth,
director of the environmental division of
CERA (Cambridge Energy Research
Associates), whose presentation followed
the week after Nicholas School Dean
William H. Schlesinger’s; both talked on
aspects of climate change.
“The course itself is going to follow the
rise of what I’m calling the petroleum
interval in our history as humans,” said
Read Orbach’s Revelle presentation online
Michael K. Orbach, professor of the practice of marine affairs and policy and director of the
Duke University Marine Laboratory, presented the 2002 Roger Revelle Memorial Lecture in
November 2002, “Beyond the Freedom of the Seas: Ocean Policy for the Third Millennium.”
The lecture is sponsored by the National Academy of Science’s Ocean Studies Board. You
can read his report in PDF format. Go to http://www.env.duke.edu/news/FreedomoftheSeas.pdf
Simon Rich
Rich. “And the object is to bring
everybody face-to-face with the fact
that the petroleum interval has been
a very short one in our history, and
it’s going to be over while these students
are in the prime of their lives.”
Rich said he hopes to expose the students
to issues they haven’t thought about,
and he wants them to leave the class asking
questions as they continue on their educational
and career tracks. “As I told them
in their first class, the answer probably
lies in the creation of an entirely new
paradigm. I think we need one as we come
out of the end of this petroleum interval
to survive as a human society. It’s a big
vision, but that’s what I’ve challenged
them with.”
Rich, who is chair of the Nicholas
School Board of Visitors, said he thinks
board members and others who are not
necessarily in the academic world would
benefit from the rigors of preparing to
teach a class. “It will make them appreciate
what the academic world goes through. But,
I also think they’ll learn at the same time,
plus they have a lot to teach, to impart.”
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web sites to note
Hear Simon Rich talk about his new classroom
venture at
http://www.env.duke.edu/dukenvironment/spring2003/richaudio.html
Jim Wallace photos

S CHOOL N E W S the
Second Environmental Leadership Forum
Brings Together More Than 65
Organizations and Individuals to Talk
About Disasters
Dow Chemical, IBM, Occidental
Permian, the Texas Medical Center and
the International Red Cross were among
the 65 organizations and individuals
gathered at Duke University
on Nov. 20-21 to explore
“Dealing With Disasters:
Prediction, Prevention
and Response.”
This was the second in a
series of Environmental
Leadership Forums sponsored
by AIG Environmental,
the Duke Center for
Environmental Solutions,
the Duke
University
School of Law,
The Fuqua
School of
Business and
the Nicholas
School of the
Environment
and Earth
Sciences.
Funding was provided by The Starr
Foundation, which makes possible a number
of educational programs at Duke.
The forum’s seven sessions included
an opening overview, three sessions focusing
on disaster prediction, prevention and
response, two sessions focusing on chemical
facilities and ecosecurity, and a closing
web sites to note
Column by Nicholas Board Member:
http://www.env.duke.edu/news/rohrman.
html
http://www.frontiersinecology.org/
Duke’s Annual report
http://www.yearinreview.duke.edu/
dukenvironment
log
John Koskinen, Deputy Mayor and City
Administrator,Washington, D.C.
(from left) Ken Cornell, AIG Environmental;William H. Schlesinger, Dean,
Nicholas School; Richard Meserve, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission;
and Douglas Breeden, Dean, Fuqua School
summary session. It considered disasters
that are accidental and/or “natural” as
well as those that are purposeful, such as
terrorist acts.
Norman L. Christensen, founding
dean of the Nicholas School and a member
of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical
Review Board, dissected the 1976 failure of
the Teton Dam, citing
missed signals, arbitrary
cost containment, and
failure to communicate as
contributing factors.
Christensen made the
point that a disaster is
rarely a single event, but
rather the cumulative
8
result of a series of systemic
failures. William H.
Schlesinger, dean
of the Nicholas
School, described
some of the
correlations
between human
disease transmis-
sion rates and
global changes in
sea surface temperature.
Keynote speakers were Richard A.
Meserve, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, and Michael D.
Brown, deputy director of the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, who
described the lessons learned from the
World Trade Center disaster.
Issues and questions discussed included:
• What have we learned from recent natural
and human-caused disasters that can
help in dealing with future disasters?
• What are the roles of science, law and
business in predicting, preventing and
responding to disasters?
• How should we define leadership
regarding disaster prediction,
prevention and response?
• What new models are needed?
• What is the role of information
disclosure in preventing and mitigating
disaster impacts?
• How much regulation is too much?
The next Environmental Leadership
Forum is being planned for March 8
and 9, 2004, and will focus on the many
issues surrounding energy production
and use. For information on how your
company can be included, contact
Laura Turcotte at (919) 613-8081 or
ljturco@duke.edu.
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web sites to note
Check out the forum Web site for a complete
list of speakers and topics
http://www.env.duke/forum02
Video of forum sessions is available on the
agenda page at
http://www.env.duke.edu/forum02/
agenda.html
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Read New Column by Nicholas Board Member Doug Rohrman
Board Member Doug Rohrman looks at wetlands and the law in the Ecological Society of
America’s new magazine Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. You can read it in PDF
format at http://www.env.duke.edu/news/rohrman.html. Preview the magazine online at
http://www.frontiersinecology.org/. Rohrman will have a regular column in each issue.

S CHOOL N E W S
Schlesinger Notes Evidence of Global Warming on Antarctica Trip
Nicholas School Dean William H. Schlesinger and his wife, Lisa
Dellwo Schlesinger, represented Duke University on an Alumni
Affairs excursion to Antarctica in mid-January. Schlesinger was
invited to speak on issues of global environmental change,
including ozone depletion, global warming, and their impacts
on Antarctic ecosystems.
Embarking from Ushuaia, Argentina, on Jan. 15, the
excursion first visited the Falkland Islands before continuing
to explore the Antarctic Peninsula to 65° S latitude. Traveling
on the MS Hanseatic, the Schlesingers were host to 10 Duke alumni
among more than 150 passengers aboard.
The group recorded seven species of penguins, some seen in
rookeries of up to a million birds, and a variety of whales and seals
that frequent waters of the Southern Ocean. One of the most
advanced “ice-class” vessels in the world, the 400-foot Hanseatic
easily plied iceberg-filled waters of the Antarctic Sound and
negotiated 40-foot waves in the crossing of Drake Passage.
Five Join the Nicholas School Board of Visitors
The Nicholas School Board of Visitors
welcomes five new members to its ranks:
Ann Douglas Cornell is a 1975 graduate
of Duke’s Trinity College and vice president
of the Wallace Genetic Foundation in
Washington, D.C. She has a special interest
in pesticides and children’s environmental
health issues and has been instrumental in
assisting the Nicholas School’s Children’s
Environmental Health Initiative.
Michael C. Farrar of Washington, D.C.,
rejoins the board after a two-year absence.
In a career that spans private industry and
government service, he has held high-ranking
environmental positions in the pulp,
paper and forestry industry, including its
national trade associations and a wellknown
company and at the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
During EPA’s start-up, he was instrumental
in banning DDT from the U.S. market.
He is currently a judge with the U.S.
While marveling at the pristine
conditions at their Zodiac (inflatable
boat) landing sites, Schlesinger noted
some unsettling indications of human
impact even in these most southern
lands. Using hand-held instruments,
he found that ultraviolet light comprised
6.4 percent of the total in
Buenos Aires, but more than 9.1 percent
in the Falkland Islands, which
clearly feel the impact of the “ozone
hole” over the South Pole.
Huge icebergs derived from last
spring’s breakup of the Larsen-B ice shelf
were a constant reminder that human
activity in the temperate zone extends
global warming to even the most remote
reaches of the planet, he said.
Duke’s Annual Report is Now Online Only
If you want a glimpse of Duke during the year 2002, Duke’s annual report is now an online
publication. Be sure and click on the environment section under school reports. The interactive
publication has links to all the schools as well as headlines during the year. Go to
http://www.yearinreview.duke.edu/
Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic
Safety and Licensing Board.
John S. Hahn is a partner at Mayer
Brown Rowe & Maw in Washington, D.C.,
specializing in environmental law. He is a
1974 graduate of Duke’s Trinity College and
received his law degree from Yale. His special
environmental interests include habitat conservation,
brownfield development, coastal
and flood plain development, and science in
regulatory decision-making.
Lyons Gray, after representing the 39th
District in the North Carolina General
Assembly for 14 years, is president of the
Downtown Winston-Salem (North Carolina)
Partnership and chairman of the EPA
Lisa Dellwo Schlesinger photos
Environmental Finance Advisory Board. His
daughter, Charlotte Gray, is a 1999 graduate
of the Nicholas School’s MEM program.
Robert L. Wood is a business group
president for Dow Chemical Co. with
responsibility for five business units:
polyurethanes, epoxy products and intermediates,
propylene oxide assets, polyurethanes
systems, and automotive. While based in
Indianapolis as vice president of marketing
for DowBrands Household Products in 1989,
he served as senior deputy mayor and chief
operating officer for the city of Indianapolis.
He was a featured speaker at Duke’s first
Environmental Leadership Forum.
Cornell Farrar Hahn Gray Wood

S CHOOL N E W S the
Duke Students Launch Campus Greening
Effort With Talk By Architect
Internationally renowned architect William
McDonough encouraged Duke to embark
on a plan to go beyond the current
standards and become a leader in green
initiatives in a Feb. 27 talk kicking off the
Duke University Greening Initiative.
“Duke has a unique opportunity in this
country right now,” McDonough told the
audience of 400 gathered in Geneen
Auditorium at Fuqua School of Business.
Hailed by Time Magazine in 1999 as a “Hero
for the Planet,” McDonough is founding
principal of William McDonough and
Partners, a team of some 40 architects
practicing ecologically, socially and
economically intelligent architecture in
the United States and abroad.
McDonough’s talk was the first major
event of the Duke Greening Initiative, the
brainchild of undergraduates Justin Segall
and Anthony Vitarelli. Their group, which
ParksWatch Gathers Directors for First
Conference in Guatemala
ParksWatch, a program of the Nicholas
School’s Center for Tropical Conservation
(CTC), held its first conference at Tikal
National Park in Peten, Guatemala, in
December.
ParksWatch is a watchdog and monitoring
organization that conducts on-theground
inspection of national parks
and equivalent protected areas in Latin
America. It operates through partnerships
with individuals and organizations in each
target country.
web sites to note
Schlesinger’s op-eds
http://www.env.duke.edu/news/
bill-airqual.html
http://www.env.duke.edu/news/westnileschlesinger.html
http://www.env.duke.edu/news/schlesing
er-eyes.html
dukenvironment
log
includes graduate students from the
Nicholas School and Fuqua, aims to produce
a series of projects that will encourage
Duke to become a national leader in
sustainability and green building projects.
Segall and Vitarelli began a green
building effort in August as part of a public
policy class on “Enterprising Leadership.”
As part of their studies they met with
university administrators and asked them
to adopt the Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design (LEED) standards
developed by the U.S. Green Building
Council in all Duke building and renovation
projects.
In November, with encouragement
from their adviser, Simon Rich, chair of
the Nicholas School’s Board of Visitors,
Segall and Vitarelli enlisted students in the
Masters of Environmental Management
program to take the project beyond building
standards. The project then became
the Duke University Greening Initiative.
This conference was the first opportunity
for ParksWatch directors from each of
the five projects (Brazil, Guatemala,
Mexico, Peru and Venezuela) to work with
CTC-based staff to develop consistent
protocols for conducting park inspections
and processing the resulting information.
The five-day conference included
presentations by each of the organization’s
in-country partners, a methodology
workshop, a presentation by ParksWatch
founder and CTC co-director, John
Terborgh, and a field trip to Laguna del
Tigre National Park. It was made possible
10
The graduate students have started
researching which other universities are
meeting LEED standards and developing
campus greening programs, and hope to
see some students take on the greening
effort as part of their masters projects.
“We want Duke to make greening part
of the natural order of life on campus:
we want organic foods available on campus,
recycled products used in the bathrooms,
buses to run on biodeisel fuels, and ‘green’
in the curriculum,” said Mandy Schmitt,
a joint degree student in environment
and law and a member of the group’s
executive committee.
w w w.
web sites to note
Keep up with the Duke University Greening
Initiative online at
http://www.duke.edu/greening
by The Gordon and Betty Moore
Foundation.
As of January 2003, ParksWatch has
audited 35 protected areas.
web sites to note
Find out more about ParksWatch at
http://www.parkswatch.org
Check out the Center for Tropical
Conservation at
http://www.duke.edu/web/ctc/
William McDonough
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w w w.
Don’t Miss Dean Schlesinger’s Op-eds and Speech
Check out Dean William H. Schlesinger op-ed “Relaxed standards threaten N.C. air quality
EPA decision could undermine effectiveness of what state has done,” which appeared in the
Charlotte Observer in November, at http://www.env.duke.edu/news/bill-airqual.html
“For Warming Up to Disaster — West Nile virus is only a wake-up call,” which appeared in the
Chicago Tribune early last fall, go to http://www.env.duke.edu/news/westnile-schlesinger.html
And, if you missed his speech “Eyes Wide Shut” to the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina
about stewardship of the earth, go to http://www.env.duke.edu/news/schlesinger-eyes.html.

S CHOOL N E W S
Ice Storm Marks Second Time in Six Years That Major
Weather Event Damages Duke Forest
In his 24 years at Duke University, Judson Edeburn has seen
Duke Forest sustain only two major weather-related events that
caused substantial forestwide damage, and both happened in
the past six years.
The early winter ice storm that began coating the trees and
power lines in the Triangle area on Dec. 4, 2002 snapped the
tops off of middle-aged pine trees with a bang and broke
limbs over a large part of the almost 8,000-acre Duke Forest,
closing all sections to the public through February. Cleanup
costs will run at least $55,000 not including staff time, said
Edeburn, Duke Forest resource manager.
When Hurricane Fran roared over Durham in the early
hours of Sept. 6, 1996, it uprooted hardwoods and blew down
every tree in pockets of the Forest, closing the Forest across
Durham and Orange counties for up to six months and causing
some $200,000 in damages, said Edeburn.
“We’ve never seen anything like this in the Forest — two severe
weather events that cause substantial damage — that I know of from
the people I’ve talked to. To have two such events in six years is
unusual. A tornado hit a portion of the Hillsboro Division of the
Forest in 1993, but damage was confined to a small area.”
Unlike Fran, which blew down hardwoods, the ice storm
wreaked the most havoc among small pines, 15 to 30 years of age,
over a wide area. The younger trees, six to nine inches in diameter
and three to 10 years old, were flexible enough to bend without
breaking, said Edeburn. Most trees older than 30 were generally
strong enough to withstand the weight of the ice, though some very
large trees snapped or were uprooted.
“But those trees in the middle range are growing vigorously and
have a lot of green needles and surface area for the ice to build up.
They snapped leaving snags 15 to 30 feet high throughout the
Forest,” said Edeburn.
School Saddened at Death of Marine Lab Undergraduate
The Nicholas School was saddened by the
loss of Maggie Katharine Schneider, a
Duke Marine Lab undergraduate, who died
from injuries in a Thanksgiving weekend
car wreck.
Schneider, a junior biology major from
St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, was
returning to Beaufort from Nags Head on
Nov. 30 with two other Duke juniors,
Megan Leigh Mobley of Olive, Mont., and
Melissa Madeline Smith of Sanford,
Maine, when the car they were riding in was
hit head-on by a pickup truck. Schneider,
who never regained consciousness, died on
Dec. 4.
The three friends, all attending the fall
term at the Duke Marine Lab, had spent
their Thanksgiving break at Nags Head visiting
Schneider’s grandparents. The other
two students were not seriously injured.
A memorial service, attended by
Schneider’s parents and brother, was held
in Duke Chapel Dec. 10. Her friends gathered
and celebrated her life talking about
what a vibrant and energetic person
Schneider was and about the joy she
brought to their lives.
Judson Edeburn photos
In stands of trees in two of the Forest’s five divisions — the
Blackwood and Durham divisions — up to 40 to 50 percent of the
trees were damaged and the entire stands may have to be cut down,
he said.
Ironically, the ice storm offers the potential for new and continued
research. Edeburn said that this spring a Master of Forestry
student will begin a survey of the species and size of trees that
received the most damage to determine if there is a correlation.
On another front, researchers at the Forest’s FACE (Free Air
Carbon Dioxide Enrichment) site in Orange County, which lost
30 percent of the tree tops in its circle towers, hope that the damage
will add a new angle to the research. The FACE experiment is
unique in that it provides a large-scale, long-term experiment of
how forests will respond to the atmosphere of the future. The ice
storm damage will now afford researchers a chance to look at what
happens when the tree cover is damaged, said Ram Oren, FACE
co-principal investigator.
Maggie Katharine Schneider

y Scottee Cantrell
Scott Taylor photos
S TUDY
Marine biologist Larry Crowder stands
beside a round concrete tub in the Duke
Marine Lab’s turtle ranch. Ten small
loggerhead turtles, each splashing in a
brightly colored surplus Easter basket,
vigorously flap their front fins and open
their mouths hoping to be fed.
Crowder points to spots of fingernail
polish on their shells that let him know
these turtles hatched on a beach in
Georgia. Over the course of this past
summer, volunteers caught 500 baby
loggerheads for Crowder as the hatchlings
emerged from their nests on four beaches
in the Carolinas and Georgia. They were
packed in wet beach sand and quickly
transported by Crowder’s research team
to the ranch on the Beaufort, N.C.,
campus for one of the largest-scale
projects of its kind aimed at preserving
the threatened turtles.
Crowder and Jeanette Wyneken from
Florida Atlantic University (FAU), who
studied another 700 turtles that hatched
Loggerhead Crisis Brewing?
Surprising Study Results Show More Females Than Males Hatching
in Northern Population
1 2 3 4
dukenvironment
on six beaches as far south as Miami, are
gathering information about how many
males and females are hatching in the
northern and southern loggerhead turtle
subpopulations.
Their early results show a surprisingly
small percentage of males among the
turtles that Crowder’s team collected in
the Carolinas and Georgia, which may
have serious implications for the future
of the entire Southeastern population.
(The Florida population alone makes up
about a third of the world’s total loggerhead
population.)
The researchers expected that the
males would dominate in the north, and
instead they found that the “girls” had the
advantage: for every two males there were
three females.
“The results we have seen so far
are surprising and even alarming,”
said Crowder, who is Stephen Toth
Professor of Marine Biology in the
Nicholas School.
1., 2., and 3. Laparoscopies were conducted to determine each turtle's gender: Jeanette Wyneken, Florida Atlantic University, is in scrubs
12
The project to study the gender ratios
began in earnest last summer (2002)
under Crowder’s direction at the Duke
Marine Lab, and under Wyneken’s direction
at FAU in Boca Raton and the Mote
Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla. It is
part of a three-year research study funded
mainly by a $350,000 grant from the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
This is the first time so many loggerhead
hatchlings have been raised and studied
so intensely.
They began by enlisting volunteer
turtle watchers who monitored the nests
along the Atlantic, checked nest temperatures
and alerted the research teams when
the 2-inch hatchlings were getting ready to
make a break for the ocean.
Once the calls started rolling in that
the baby turtles were on the move, the
research teams hit the road to collect the
hatchlings and bring them to their temporary
homes at the three research facilities.
At Beaufort the turtles were housed in a

converted fish shed in several water-filled
tanks. Since no one had ever raised this
many turtles, the teams were kept busy
figuring out how much and what to feed
them, Crowder said. In Beaufort, they got
a menu of mostly shrimp, laced with extra
vitamins and minerals.
The hatchlings grew rapidly, and at
about three months, they were big enough
for a small surgical procedure to determine
their gender. Wyneken conducted
the laparoscopies, which involved making
a small incision and briefly inserting a tiny
scope to examine the babies’ gonads.
“These turtles have very small gonads
at this age and are difficult to identify,”
said Wyneken, an expert on sea turtle
anatomy and turtle conservation and
an FAU assistant professor of biological
sciences. “By relying on several different
criteria, we were able to get the information.”
The babies, as big as your hand at that
point, took two weeks to recover, and then
were ferried out from shore to begin their
5 6 7 8
lives at sea in the warm waters of the Gulf
Stream. The Beaufort turtles hitched a
ride on a Coast Guard cutter to make the
25-mile journey.
The charismatic adult loggerhead is a
reddish brown reptile with powerful jaws
and a head as big as a log. As adults, they
weigh between 150 and 400 pounds and
sport shells that are as long as a yardstick
or bigger. They swim the Atlantic with five
other species of sea turtles and enjoy
hanging out in fairly shallow coastal waters
to eat crabs and mollusks. Shallow water
can be a dangerous place for these turtles,
which were classified as threatened in
1978 in the United States. In the past,
commercial fishermen trawling for shrimp
have inadvertently caught and drowned
loggerheads.
People and beach development are
among the turtle’s biggest threats. The
30-year-old female turtles returning to
the beaches where they were born to dig
a nest and lay hundreds of eggs may find
beach renourishment or development
have made their beaches unsuitable.
Hatchlings, blinded by artificial lighting,
may head toward death instead of the
water. It’s a tough life. Only one in
1,000 of the hatchlings will live long
enough to reproduce.
As a result of research by Crowder
and other scientists, the National Marine
Fisheries Service now requires commercial
fishermen to install devices called turtle
excluder devices (TEDs) on their nets,
which allow the smaller turtles to escape.
These seem to have reduced the number
of juvenile and young adult loggerhead
deaths, Crowder said.
In fact, the TEDs and other conservation
measures appear to have helped reverse the
decline of the adult female loggerhead
population between Jacksonville, Fla.,
and Miami. This subpopulation is now
increasing by 4 percent annually.
While this is good news for the southern
turtles, the northern turtles aren’t as
4., 5., 6., 7.Turtles were deployed from a Coast Guard cutter into the Gulf Stream; Marine Lab research technician Jim Wicker is wearing a red suit and white cap 8. Some 500 hatchlings were raised
at the Duke Marine Lab

S TUDY
fortunate. The loggerhead numbers from
Jacksonville through North Carolina are
still dropping at about 2 percent annually,
said Crowder. When you combine this fact
with the surprising results of the gender
study, it is cause for major concern.
As strange as it may seem, it is the nest
temperature that determines whether a
boy or a girl turtle hatches out of the egg.
Scientists have believed that if the nest is
no warmer than 84 degrees Fahrenheit —
as you would expect in the Carolinas and
Georgia — then most of babies will be
boys. If the temperature is warmer — such
as you might find on the Florida beaches
— you get girls.
Based on this theory, Crowder said, he
and Wyneken expected to find that the
northern beaches provided more males to
mate with the southern females that
hatched on the Florida beaches.
When Wyneken started putting together
the results from the laparoscopies, she
found just what she expected from the
southern population: the hatchlings were
85 percent female and 15 percent males.
But she got a shock when the numbers
started rolling in from the northern
group: initial findings showed that the
females outnumbered the males 60
percent to 40 percent.
“What we’re seeing is very few males
being produced in the north,” said
9 10 11 12
Crowder. “So the situation is we have a
large and recovering adult loggerhead
population in the south that is increasing
at 4 percent a year but is producing almost
90 percent females. And we have a northern
population that is still in decline and
“By seeing those really skewed sex ratios, we may be looking at a crisis that is not
going to show up for 20 years when there aren’t enough males to go around”
isn’t producing nearly the percentage
of males as we thought it was.
“So if we lose this northern subpopulation,
which is still in decline despite all
we’ve done, it has potential ramifications
for the entire regional population.”
“There may simply not be enough
males,” said Wyneken. “Additionally,
the genetic diversity that this northern
group contributes to both the northern
and southern subpopulations should not
be lost.”
Crowder and Wyneken are just beginning
to sort through all the implications
and questions that these results raise. They
hope to bring another round of baby
loggerheads to the Beaufort and Florida
facilities this summer to start building on
the data they are now compiling.
“By seeing those really skewed sex ratios,
we may be looking at a crisis that is not
going to show up for 20 years when there
aren’t enough males to go around,” Wyneken
said. “Or we may be looking at a really
interesting mating system — if it is normal
— to have one male for every 10 females.”
So, they need to verify their results.
9. Hatchling project coordinator, Jesse Marsh, takes one of many measurements on a baby loggerhead in Beaufort 10.Yuka Higashino, a student in
the Marine Lab summer program, holds hatchling 11. Hatchling 12. Larry Crowder, Duke Marine Lab, shows off baby loggerheads
dukenvironment
14
Crowder said that there are several
avenues that this type of research can take.
One possibility, Crowder said, is “we’ll
have to start thinking about global warming
and climate change. There are a whole
string of other possibilities that we are
going to consider.”
Scottee Cantrell is director of communications for
the Nicholas School. Monte Basgall, Duke News
and Communications, contributed to this article.
w w w.
web sites to note
Video on Turtle Project:
http://www.env.duke.edu/news/crowder
movie.html
Larry Crowder Bio:
http://www.env.duke.edu/faculty/bios/
crowder.html

R ESEARCH
Duke Researchers Are FindingThat the Waves We Never See May Play a Big Role in Shaping the Planet
Waves help define
the ocean. They mark the boundary
between land and sea, shape the beach and
warn of approaching storms. But, beyond the
swells familiar to beachcombers and surfers,
other, less visible waves also give form to the
sea. Offshore and deepwater waves sweep up
sand and other forms of sediment as they
churn with the tide. Now, Duke scientists are
taking a closer look at this interplay between
sand and sea. In two separate labs, researchers
are exploring the relationship between
offshore waves, the shoreline and the
continental slopes. In the process, they are
turning up some surprising clues to coastal
sedimentation patterns that have not been
well understood up to now.
Work by a team including geologist
Lincoln Pratson found that “internal” or
underwater waves — in addition to earthquakes
— play a role in forming the inexplicably
shallow gradient of continental slopes
in ocean basins. Also based in the Nicholas
School’s Earth and Ocean Sciences Division,
A. Brad Murray analyzes wave angles and
sediment transport, but from the nearshore
perspective. Rather than relying on traditional
simulation models, he’s brought a new
tool to the field. Using the principles of
chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics,
Murray and his team discovered that they
could explain shoreline changes based on the
angle between offshore waves and the beach.
While Murray’s
work takes him just beyond
breaking waves, Pratson’s takes him far out to
sea, to the continental margin. A Columbiatrained
geologist, Pratson spent much of
his career studying the evolution of the
submarine seascape that marks the transition
from shallow to deep water. Once the edge
of the continent’s waterfront, the margin’s
plains give way to a gradual slope. There,
Pratson said, a thick accumulation of
sediment contains “the most complete record
of the earth’s history.” In addition to holding
clues to the earth’s past, the slope also feeds
its future by storing and recycling the ocean’s
vital nutrients. Much of Pratson’s work has
revolved around the role of sedimentary
processes that shape this important
underwater terrain.
“One of the things I’m interested in is
the stability of the continental slope and what
controls it,” he said. “And a big indicator of
its stability is its gradient.”
The quest to understand this deep-sea
landscape has some practical implications.
Oil companies involved in offshore drilling
need to know whether the shelf and the
waters above can support their structures.
And instability, in particular landslides and
earthquakes, can have devastating consequences.
The 1998 tsunami that killed 3,000
people in Papua New Guinea was most likely
generated by a submarine landslide.
secret life of waves
by Tinker Ready
But
ultimately, the
slope research was driven by
“scientific curiosity,” Pratson said. “The
slope should be on the order of 10 degrees
steeper than it is. The question then becomes
— why is it so low?”
There was quite a bit of evidence supporting
the existing theory — that underwater
earthquakes and avalanches knock sediment
down and keep the slopes from becoming
steep, Pratson said. That is one reason the
role of underwater waves and tides had not
been explored in the past. Still, the avalanche
theory fails to fully answer the question of
why the slopes are so gradual, he said.
Submarine avalanches will lower the
angle of the continental slope, Pratson said.
“However, they generally require that the
continental slope achieve a steep gradient
before it becomes unstable and avalanches.
On average, the slope of the continental
slope is much less than this critical or threshold
angle.”
That unanswered question has always
intrigued Dr. David Cacchione, a consultant
and former U. S. Geological Survey scientist.
Cacchione met Pratson when the two worked
on the STRATAFORM (Strata Formation
on Margins) project. This Office of Naval
Research collaboration brought together
scientists in the mid-1990s to study the
evolution of sedimentary deposits in the
continental margin. While not the main

R ESEARCH
focus of
his career research,
the impact of internal waves
on the continental slope has always
intrigued Cacchione, who was the lead
author on a paper the researchers published
last year in the journal Science.
“I’ve done sort of back of the envelope
calculations on this for years,” he said. “I’ve
always had this idea that the slope is somehow
in equilibrium with the shear and the energy
in the internal tides.”
The STRATAFORM project brought the
two scientists together, but it also made the
research possible in another way. Data
collected for STRATAFORM allowed them
to further explore the impact of tide-driven
internal waves on the slope. What they found
was that, under the right conditions, internal
waves have the capacity to keep sediment
from settling on the slopes at a steeper angle.
“When the slope is very low — less than a
couple of degrees — the energy of internal
waves basically gets reflected up,” Pratson
said. “If the slope is very steep, then the
internal wave energy is deflected back out in
to the ocean. But when the continental slope
is at an order of 2 to 4 degrees, the internal
waves break and create a bore that moves up
the slope surface.”
The relationship between wave angle and
slope, “could be a coincidence,” Pratson
said. But, at the very least, it suggests that this
is a mechanism that should be considered as
a factor in the formations of the slopes.
While Pratson did much of his work on
the computer, the third co-author of the
paper, Andrea Ogston of the University of
Washington in Seattle, was the one who got
her feet wet. She collected data on internal
wave motions from buoy-bound instruments
that reached to the bottom of their California
Jim Wallace photo
dukenvironment
study site.
Her observations
confirmed the researcher’s
theoretical work.
In a sense, new data allowed Pratson’s
team to do its work. For Brad Murray, it was
a new approach to modeling that led him to
his cutting-edge research. Murray’s work
focuses on the applications of chaos and
complex systems theory to geology. The
approach is based on the tendency of
complicated systems with seemingly irregular
behavior to develop from simple interactions.
Complex systems theory applies to a range
of scientific endeavors, as evidenced by the
faculty who staff the Duke Center for
Nonlinear and Complex Systems. They
come from math, physics, engineering and
neurology, to name a few.
Prior to turning his attention to the sea,
Murray used complex systems theory to study
river and landscape pattern formations.
So he was not part of the shoreline change
crowd when he turned his attention to the
beach. But when it comes to systems, you
can’t find many that get more nonlinear
or complex than the processes that drive
shoreline change.
Traditionally, coastal scientists and
engineers use numerical simulation-style
modeling to analyze shoreline change. With
that approach, they try to create formulas
that mimic natural systems as accurately as
possible, including all the details of the
processes and inputs that might impact the
system, Murray said.
“I come from outside this particular
community,” Murray said. “I studied
patterns on the earth’s surface looking for
simple explanations for these complex
patterns. We try to throw out all the detail
16
and find out
what are the possible
simple interactions that would cause this or
that to happen.” Many researchers in the
coastal science don’t believe you can learn
much without those details, he said. But
Murray saw his approach to modeling as a
new way of solving an old puzzle. It also lends
itself particularly well to shoreline change.
Instead of studying change in an isolated surf
zone for a short period of time, Murray’s
model was designed to consider long-range,
large-scale change.
Working as a team that included graduate
student Andrew Ashton and then-visiting
scientist Olivier Arnoult of the École Normal
Supérieure, the work began not on the
beach, but as a physical insight in Murray’s
head. Laying in bed on vacation, Murray said
he realized that there must be a fundamental
instability in alongshore sediment transport.
From that, he deduced that waves in deep
water approaching the shoreline from high
angles (between the wave crests and the
shoreline) would make bumps grow. These
are the same waves that break on the beach,
but “at different stages of their journey,”
Murray said. They have not yet hit shallow
water, where they refract, or bend when they
“feel the bottom.” Murray said.
“If the wave crests are parallel to shore,
there can't be any transport, and if wave
crests in deep water are perpendicular to
shore, they don't even move toward the
shore, so approximately nothing happens,”
he said. “Moving away from either extreme,
the transport increases, until you reach a
maximum somewhere in the middle.”
Drawing a line from sediment transport
patterns to the angle between the wave and
1. A. Brad Murray 2. &3. Satellite images showing naturally occurring large-scale shoreline features:The Sea of Azov, Ukraine; and the Carolina Coast, USA
4. As a result of the basic instability, shoreline perturbations grow in the presence of high-angle waves

the
shore allowed
the team to create a
computer model that
would explore shoreline change of
over hundreds of miles and thousands
of years.
“It turns out that rich, complex, fascinating
behaviors come from that relationship.”
He said. “If you start with a shoreline that is
more or less straight and has small bumps on
it, everyone assumes that these bumps would
be smoothed. But that’s not true when the
waves approach shore at high angle.”
His simulations found that, eventually,
these high angle waves can create “flying spits”
and various other landforms, including capes
similar to those spanning most of the coast of
the Carolinas. He also found that sandy
coastlines continually reshape themselves,
and that changes on one beach can impact
distant beaches.
“The details of how they interact and
what you end up with probably depend on
the wave climate,” he said.
From that, an immediate, practical
application emerged from the work. Wave
angles may very well help explain why some
“hot spots” along the beach erode so readily,
he said.
These simulations are not designed
to describe what a specific stretch of beach
looks like. Instead, the computer work takes
“a much longer term and abstract view of
things,” Murray said. Still, it turned out
the team’s hypothetical scenarios strongly
resemble actual coastal morphology and
patterns of change. That suggests their
findings are relevant to shoreline behavior in
nature and adds credence to their modeling
Jim Wallace photo
approach.
The team published
their findings
in the journal Nature last year.
Murray may work in the realm of the
abstract, but he doesn’t spend all his time in
the lab. “I get out to the beach as much as I
can,” he said. “In general you don’t discover
anything new when you’re sitting at your
computer. You’re not likely to come up with
any new ideas unless you are looking at the
natural system.”
Rob Holman, a professor of oceanic
and atmospheric sciences at Oregon State
University, first learned of the Duke
professor’s work when Murray was doing his
post-doctoral work at Scripps Institution of
Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. Holman is
considered a key researcher in the area
of beach processes and large-scale coastal
behavior.
“In many ways this is a new frontier in
science and no one really knows how to
proceed,” Holman said. “Brad is one of the
new generation striking out to attack these
difficult problems.”
Both Murray and Pratson are testing
their findings in larger arenas. Pratson’s
team is working on a global analysis looking
at the continental slope and the characteristic
angle of internal waves. They are also looking
at the role internal waves may play in
nutrient storage and climate modulation.
“I think what we are going to get out of
this type of thing is a better understanding
of the ocean and the evolution of these beds
and how one interacts with the other,”
Pratson said.
Murray
also seems poised to
answer some important questions.
The shoreline change research
community “is realizing that the larger scale
and longer term stuff is important. It’s scientifically
interesting, but it’s not clear how
you study it,” Murray said.
Bill Birkemeier of the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers is the head of the agency’s Field
Research Facility in Duck, on the Outer
Banks in North Carolina. He agrees with
Murray that researchers should — literally —
take a longer look at shoreline change.
“We’re still working on a basic understanding
of small scale, but many of our
requirements require predictive capabilities
for many miles and our models don’t handle
big scales very well, ” he said. “I think
(Murray) is going to have an impact on this
field. He already has.”
Tinker Ready is a health and science writer based in
Cambridge, Mass.Her work has appeared in Nature
Medicine, The Boston Phoenix,the Utne Reader,the Los
Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Esquire,and Parents.
web sites to note
1. Lincoln Pratson 2. An image of the continental slope off of the East Coast of the United States 3. A breaking internal wave in the laboratory
4. A depiction of internal-wave energy impacting the sea bed (middle panel) or reflecting away from it (top and bottom panels)
w w w.
Brad Murray Bio:
http://www.env.duke.edu/bios/murray.html
Lincoln Pratson Bio:
http://www.env.duke.edu/bios/pratson.html

D EAN’ S P AGE forum
by William H. Schlesinger
Much of the public thinks
academic scientists are
fuzzy-haired (or baldheaded)
geeks,
happy in window-less laboratories, discovering
things that most people don’t understand,
and publishing their findings in deep
prose that can’t be read by anyone outside of
the ivory tower. We may not understand
their science but we expect their methods to
be pure and honest. And, so long as these
scientists work on questions such as the age
of the universe, we do not expect their findings
to affect the political process, at least
anytime soon.
But, for environmental scientists, daily
reality is quite different. The subject usually
is a problem—the health of the environment—for
which the public and policy makers
want a solution. The public expects the
best opinions that science can offer on how
to avoid direct risks to humans or to the natural
ecosystems that sustain life on Earth.
The debate about what to do—the costs and
benefits of actions—is often acrimonious.
Forget Politics:
Environmental Scientists Need to Speak Up and Be Heard
dukenvironment
How far should environmental scientists
venture outside the laboratory to offer an
opinion about what should be done about
environmental problems?
For one, I am on record as an activist.
When our research speaks to an issue, I
believe that academics should make every
effort to translate their findings, and their
best interpretation of the state of the science,
so that the public can understand it. We have
every right to speak out against a toxic impact
to our environment, just as we would expect
a physician to speak against a carcinogenic
substance that might contaminate our food.
Indeed, when taxpayer money has supported
our research investigations, one can argue
that we have the responsibility to go public
with our findings.
Within the current political environment
in the United States, during the past few
months, I have been accused of being “partisan”
when I have spoken out on global
warming, air pollution, or logging in our
national forests. Far from it! Academics are
not responsible for the clear differences
between the political parties in their support
of environmental issues. It is these differ-
18
ences, rather than factual, public statements
by environmental scientists, that have politicized
the debate on environmental policy.
So long as environmental scientists have
no conflict of interest in the outcome of an
issue, we should be vocal in what our
research says about human environmental
impacts. Subsequent debate about what to do
may be political, but it should be informed
by our science. And if we are asked what to
do about a problem, we have a right to speak
out without feeling that we have compromised
the integrity of our science.
In my first year as dean of the Nicholas
School, I added a section to the form on
which faculty report their accomplishments
each year. The form now asks them to list
their efforts in public outreach, education,
and media. I hope to see the entries in this
section grow. We have information that the
public needs to know, and we have the right
and responsibility to convey it.
Schlesinger is dean of the Nicholas School and
James B. Duke Professor of Biogeochemistry

S TUDENT N E W S action
Living a Double Life:
For Six Months of the Year, Grad Student Luke Dollar Trades Number Crunching in Durham for a
Chance to Track the Elusive Fossa in Madagascar
by Margaret L. Harris
Dressed in his Sunday best and fresh from singing tenor in
Duke’s Chapel Choir, Luke Dollar doesn’t look much like a field
biologist. The floppy fringe of hair around his clean-shaven face
is neatly combed, he doesn’t exude strange jungle odors, and
nothing about his amiable grin suggests tropical diseases, pith
helmets, or man-eating crocodiles.
But Dollar, it seems, lives a double life. When the doctoral
student in ecology is in Durham, work with adviser Stuart Pimm
in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences
means chugging through data and sipping wine on Sunday
afternoons with the rest of Pimm’s group — a tight-knit crew he
lovingly calls “The Family.”
For six months of the year, though, Dollar’s life takes him to
Madagascar, an island off the coast of southern Africa and home
to some of the strangest and least-understood animals on Earth.
At the field station he and Pimm established in the Ankarafantsika
dry forest, Dollar is principal investigator for several projects,
including a groundbreaking study of Madagascar’s largest predator
and a systematic survey of Malagasy conservation efforts. It’s a
world away from Durham, and by the time he reaches the station,
Dollar’s ties and fine food are long gone, traded for wildlifethemed
t-shirts and a steady diet of rice and beans.
Not that he’s complaining. Dollar estimates he has traveled to
Madagascar “10 or 11 times,” and he relishes each opportunity to
step outside the Western mainstream.
“Living there teaches you what you really need to survive, to be
happy,” he said. “It’s not things-based. We take a lot for granted.”
Dollar, a 1995 Duke graduate, made his first trip to the island
nation in the Indian Ocean when he was still an undergraduate.
He spent the summer before his senior year working on a Duke
Primate Center project in the southeastern Ranomafana rain
forest. On that trip, he studied lemurs — cuddly vegetarian
ancestors of monkeys and apes. But he found his true calling after
a mysterious signal from a long-dead transmitting collar led him
to wisps of lemur fur, a mangled radio collar, and very little else.
The collar-chomping culprit, his Malagasy guide explained in
hushed tones, was a fossa (pronounced FOO-sa), Madagascar’s
largest predator. Pound-for-pound, the elusive, bobcat-sized
fossa is among the world’s fiercest creatures. At the end of the dry
season when prey is in short supply, Dollar says, they’ve been
photo captions from left to right (top to bottom): 1. Madagascar sunset 2. Betsileo village child in Madagascar 3. Ring-tailed mongoos (Galidia elegans) 4. Namorona River in Madagascar
5. & 6. Ranomafana National Park 7.Three-day hike into Zahamena National Park

S TUDENT N E W S
known to “do really amazing stuff,” including
making successful solo attacks on cows and
pigs. For decades after its discovery, though,
the elusive fossa remained a scientific
mystery. Even its place in the animal
kingdom had to be pencilled in. The fossa
looks something like a cat-dog hybrid, with
its long tail, pointed snout and sharp claws;
and DNA evidence linking it to the
mongoose family was a long time coming.
Now, thanks in large part to the work of
Dollar and his team, the veil of mystery
around the fossa is lifting. Early observers
had assumed it must be nocturnal because
they rarely saw it, but now scientists know
that the fossa is cathemeral, or equally
active day and night. When it comes to
food, fossas regard “anything with a heartbeat”
as potential prey, but lemurs make up
a large part of their diet. This might seem
like an ecological Catch-22 — what should
conservation-minded scientists do to help
an endangered predator whose chief prey is
itself endangered? But the actual relationship
is considerably healthier, Dollar said.
By keeping more common varieties of
lemur in check, fossa predation prevents
these better-adapted lemurs from outcompeting
their endangered cousins. Take away
dukenvironment
the fossa, Dollar said, and rare lemurs like
the sifaka would likely die off, too.
The threat to fossa survival is two-fold.
As with thousands of other species in
Texas-sized Madagascar, slash and burn
agriculture is rapidly consuming the fossa’s
natural habitat. Worse, many Malagasy
people fear and loathe the fossa and will
shoot it on sight.
“Killing a sifaka [lemur] is taboo,
but the fossa is like their big bad wolf,” he
explained. “They’re told from childhood
that if they’re bad, the fossa will come and
get them. And if their chickens disappear,
it’s always the fossa’s fault.”
Fossas do eat chickens — in fact, Luke’s
team uses them to bait live-traps — but Dollar
believes local fear has a much deeper cause.
When humans arrived in Madagascar about
1,500 years ago, the fourth largest island in
the world had twice as many species as it
does now. Among the ranks of the nowextinct
is an animal Dollar describes as
“the fossa’s big brother,” a predator large
and fierce enough to hunt and kill
humans. Although there are no reliable
reports of modern fossas attacking humans,
Malagasy animosity may stem from a time
when a “fossa” attack was a very real threat.
20
Dollar figures the best way to change
misperceptions is through education, so
community programs form an important
part of his group’s work. Usually, after
team members sedate a trapped fossa with a
dart from a blowpipe, they transport the
slumbering animal back to the station for
tests — measurements, blood work, and
tissue samples. Sometimes, during these
sessions, the once-feared creature becomes
a goodwill ambassador for the entire team,
as many villagers have a chance to see,
touch, and even hold a fossa for the first
time in their lives. Afterwards, Dollar said,
villagers will often greet members of his
group with shouts of “Arovny ny fossa!” —
“Save the fossa!”— in Malagasy.
Fossa visits aren’t the team’s only
community outreach program. Others
include attending village ceremonies,
helping the Peace Corps build a conservation-themed
basketball court (complete
with a slam-dunking lemur on the backboard),
and vaccinating domestic animals
against rabies. The team itself includes
many native Malagasy, both local helpers
and full-time graduate students from
Antananarivo University in the capital.
The long-term goal of their efforts,
8. Slash and burn agriculture hillside in Madagascar 9. Madagascar capital city, Antananarivo; rice paddies in foreground 10. Fossa (Cryptoprocia ferox) 11. Black and white ruffed lemur (Varicea variegata
variegata) 12. Slash and burn agriculture; hand-terraced rice paddies 13. &14. Luke Dollar in the field (Photos 1-12 by Luke Dollar;and photo 14 by Chris Hildreth, Duke University Photography)

‘Anybody There Do Carnivores?’
Twenty years ago, only about 30 Florida panthers survived in
the wild, and most carried genetic defects from inbreeding.
Today, thanks to a controversial program that improved panther
viability by crossbreeding them with their Texas cousins,
the situation has improved. But the heated political atmosphere
surrounding the panther made it impossible for local
groups to do objective science. Who, then, could take years of
data and write papers on the panther?
Dollar said, is to empower the Malagasy
people to understand and manage their
own resources.
That might seem like a tall order,
even for a man whose enthusiasm seems
undimmed by hazards ranging from
political instability to malaria (despite
taking prophylactic anti-malarial drugs,
he’s had the disease four times). However,
Dollar believes his ambitious, activist
approach is the only way to ensure longterm
survival of the animals and ecosystems
he studies.
“If researchers aren’t paying attention
to the conservation implications, they
shouldn’t be doing research,” he said,
leaning forward to emphasize the point.
“And if they don’t have policy implications,
they shouldn’t be there either.”
Dollar acknowledges that his views may
seem harsh to some of his fellow scientists.
The spectre of extinction, however, is very
real, and he takes it seriously. A committed
animal lover — he answers his telephone
with a cheery “Hello, animal house!” —
Dollar is the only biologist in Madagascar
who keeps a full-time veterinarian on staff.
The extra expense has paid off: no research
animals have died under the team’s care.
At times, Dollar even gives the
impression that the fossa’s survival is a
matter of personal scientific pride, and an
experience early in his career explains why.
When he joined Pimm’s team, “The
Family” was based at the University of
Tennessee. There, Dollar worked next door
to the man who had been the world’s expert
on ivory-billed woodpeckers. But the last
ivory-bill had perished years before, leaving
the scientist with only stuffed specimens
and reams of data to show for his life’s work.
“I realized pretty quickly that if I didn’t
want to know a lot about an extinct species
when I retired, I had to look towards
conservation as well as pure science,”
Dollar said, noting that one of the first
fossas he ever trapped was later killed.
So, by utilizing Pimm’s expertise with
Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
data-managing software, the team launched
a broad survey of Madagascar’s protected
areas. Using images taken by LANDSAT
Earth-mapping satellites, the group tracked
10-year deforestation rates in and around
seven protected regions. Such satellitebased
tracking, Dollar said, is an “easy,
cheap and effective” way of monitoring
and quantifying the success of conservation
efforts. By quantifying conservation,
scientists can hold ineffective managers
accountable. He cited the Ankarafantsika
Integrated Natural Reserve as an example;
under kleptocratic local management, the
reserve actually lost habitat faster than
nearby unprotected areas — a phenomenon
Dollar compared to “a conservation Enron.”
On a more encouraging note, parks
with tourism or research development
did significantly better at keeping forest
cover than undeveloped parks or surrounding
areas. The reason, Dollar said,
is that the presence of outsiders cuts down
on poaching and illegal habitat destruction,
and jobs in research or tourism offer
local Malagasy better-paid alternatives
to farming.
“Stuart Pimm’s group had been in the Everglades doing
bird research for over a decade,” graduate student Luke
Dollar explained. “So the Florida people called up and asked,
‘Anybody there do carnivores?’”
Three days and 15,000 photocopies later, Dollar had all
the Florida panther data in hand and was ready to start mining
it for papers. He presented the first at Cambridge in
March, and he says the panther data displays some parallels to
the fossa that he is studying in Madagascar.
“The panther 20 years ago was in the shape that fossa will
be in 20 years from now if we don’t continue our work,” he
said. “I hope the fossa population never reaches those levels,
but if it does, we have a road map.”
— Margaret Harris
“In the absence of some other way to
survive, they’re going to do what they can,
which is slash and burn agriculture,” Dollar
said. “But growing rice is hard work, and if
people have options, they’ll take them.
Someone who’s just worried about survival
hasn’t necessarily put together the fact that
if they keep cutting down forest, they’ll
ruin the watershed. And then they’ll starve
to death. Since I care about people as much
as I care about habitat, I want to help them
strike a balance.”
Fortunately, for a man who lives in two
cultures, life is all about balance. “I have
the best of both worlds,” he says, grinning.
“And I love going to Madagascar. But it’s
still nice to be eating something besides
rice and beans.”
Margaret Harris T'03 is a physics major with a
medieval/renaissance studies minor and a side
interest in science writing. She will enter physics
graduate school in the fall.
w w w.
web sites to note
Want to know more about Luke Dollar and fossa?
http://www.earthwatch.org/expeditions/
dollar_02.html
http://www.pulseplanet.com/archive/Nov
02/2791.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/
madagascar/dispatches/20000525.html
http://www.nwf.org/internationalwildlife/2000/fossa.html

F ACULTY & STAFF N OTES scope
Presentations and Conferences
At the Fall 2002 Meeting of the American
Geophysical Union, professor of geology
Paul Baker presented the papers
“Geochemical and Diatom Records of
Hydrologic Variability in the Tropical
Andes During the Late Quaternary From
Drill Cores of Lake Titicaca” (with S.
Fritz, G. Seltzer, K. Arnold, P. Tapia),
and “Oxygen
Isotopes and
Ring Widths in
the Tropical
Tree Species
Polylepis tarapacana
as Proxies of
Past
Paul Baker
Precipitation in
the Tropical
Andes of South America” (with A.
Ballantyne, R. Jackson, M. Silman, M.
Evans, and S. Leavitt).
Larry Crowder, Stephen Toth
Professor of Marine Ecology, was a participant
in the talk, “Bycatch from Different
Fishing Gears: Impacts from Populations
to Ecosystems,” and organizer for
“Rethinking the Management of Oceanic
Pelagics: Forging a Future for Sea Turtles”
during the annual meeting of the
American Association for the
Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) held in
Denver, Colo., in February.
In November, Peter Haff, professor of
geology and civil and environmental engineering
and chair of the Division of Earth
and Ocean Sciences, gave an invited talk
on “The Future of Landscape – Does
Nature Bat Last?” for the Department of
Geological Sciences at Florida State
University, and again in December for
the Department of Geography and
Environmental Engineering at Johns
Hopkins University.
Professor of Geology Jeffrey Karson
begins a research cruise aboard the R/V
Atlantis this April for an investigation of the
Lost City Vent Field in the Mid-Atlantic
Ridge with the Alvin submersible.
In October, at the Annual Meeting of
the Geological Society of America held in
Denver, Colo., Karson participated in the
dukenvironment
Integrated Tectonics Forum, sponsored by
the National Science Foundation.
In September, he made two poster
presentations for the Inter-Ridge
Theoretical Institute on Thermal Regime
of Ocean Ridges and Dynamics of
Hydrothermal Circulation in Pavia, Italy:
“Geologic Setting of Serpentinite-Hosted
Hydrothermal Vents at the Lost City,
Atlantis Massif, Mid-Atlantic Ridge,
30°N” (with E.A. Williams, D.S. Kelley,
D.K. Blackman and the MARVEL Cruise
Participants), and “Outcrop-Scale
Structure of the Atlantis Massif with
Implications for its Evolution” (with E.A.
Williams).
Karson also attended the Fall 2002
Meeting of the American Geophysical
Union in San Francisco, Calif., in
December and gave the following talks:
“Proterozoic Blueschist-Bearing Mélange
in the Anti-Atlas Mountains, Morocco:
Implications for Pan-African Subduction”
(with K.P. Hefferan, H. Admou, R Hilal,
A. Saquaque, T. Juteau, and M. Bohn);
“Internal Structure of Uppermost Oceanic
Crust Created at Intermediate-to Fast-
Spreading Ridges: Evidence of Subaxial
Faulting, Tilting, and Subsidence from
Vertical Crustal Sections”; and “The
Ultramafic-Hosted Lost City Hydrothermal
Field: Clues in The Search for Life
Elsewhere in the Solar System?” (with D.S
Kelley, J.A. Baross, G.L. Früh-Green,
and M.O. Schrenk).
Lynn Maguire, associate professor of
the practice of environmental management,
gave the
talk “What Can
Decision
Analysis Do for
Invasive Species
Management?”
at the annual
meeting of the
Lynn Maguire
22
Society for Risk
Analysis in New
Orleans, La., December 2002.
A. Bradshaw Murray, assistant professor
of geomorphology and coastal processes,
gave several talks at the Fall 2002
Meeting of the American Geophysical
Union held in San Francisco, Calif: “Rip
Currents and Rip Channels on Non-
Barred Beaches: A Secondary
Morphodynamic Feedback? Field
Evidence and Model Results”; “Self-
Organized Evolution of Sandy Coastline
Shapes: Connections with Shoreline
Erosion Problems” (with A. Ashton);
“Formation of Rip Currents Due to Wave-
Current Interactions” (with J. Yu); and
“Are There Connections Between
Erosional Hot Spots and Alongshore
Sediment Transport Along the North
Carolina Outer Banks?” (with A. Ashton).
John W. Terborgh, James B. Duke
Professor of Environmental Science, was
the invited keynote speaker for the annual
meeting of Conservation International
held in April at the Smithsonian National
Museum of Natural History, Washington,
D.C. The weeklong meeting had a technical
focus with themes of invasive species;
land use change, pollution and global climate
change; monitoring and evaluation
of conservation outcomes; and centers for
biodiversity conservation (CBCs): changing
the scale of conservation.
Professor of Law and Environmental
Policy Jonathan B. Wiener presented
“Comparing Precaution in the U.S. and
Europe,” at the Sanford Institute of Public
Policy, Duke University in January 2003.
In December 2002, at the annual
meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis in
New Orleans, La., he presented “Judicial
Review of Risk Science in the U.S. and
Europe: The Case of Antibiotics in
Animal Feed.” Also in December, at the
Resources for the Future conference in
Washington D.C., Wiener presented
“International Experience with Competing
Regulatory Approaches,” and was a discussant
in a session on “Leaded Gasoline.”
In November, Wiener co-organized
the Second Annual Duke Environmental
Leadership Forum, “Dealing with
Disasters: Prediction, Prevention and
Response,” held at Duke University, and
was conference co-organizer for “The
Malaria-DDT Dilemma: Science, Policy
and Law,” also at Duke University.

F ACULTY & STAFF N OTES
In Print
Recent publications by Nicholas School faculty or staff
Professor of Geology Paul Baker
• “Trans-Atlantic Climate Connections,”
Science, 2002 (author)
• “Early Warming of Tropical South
America at the Last Glacial-Interglacial
Transition,” Science, 2002 (coauthor)
Peter Haff, professor of geology and
civil and environmental engineering and
chair of the Division of Earth and Ocean
Sciences
• “Neogeomorphology,” Earth and Ocean
Sciences, 2002 (author)
Rob Jackson, associate professor of
botany and environment
• The Earth Remains Forever: Generations at a
Crossroads, University of Texas Press,
2002 (author). This book has received
favorable reviews nationally in newspapers
such as the Boston Globe and the
newswire Associated Press and in local
newspapers. Interviews have been aired
on radio talk shows including National
Public Radio’s “Tavis Smiley Show” and
“Morning Edition.” Jackson has given
two book readings to audiences at local
bookstores, the Regulator Bookshop
in Durham and Quail Ridge Books
in Raleigh.
• “Linking Molecular Insight and
Ecological Research,” Trends in Ecology and
Evolution, 2002 (coauthor)
• “Positive feedbacks of Fire, Climate, and
Vegetation and the Conversion of
Tropical Savanna,” Journal of Geophysical
Research, 2002 (coauthor)
Professor of Geology Jeffrey Karson
• “Proterozoic Blue Schist-Bearing
Mélange in the Anti-Atlas Mountains,
Morocco,” Precambrian Research, 2002
(coauthor)
• “Geologic Structure of the Uppermost
Oceanic Crust Created at Fast- to
Intermediate-Rate Spreading Centers,”
Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences,
2002 (author)
• “Comparison of Geologic and Seismic
Structure of Uppermost Fast-Spread
Oceanic Crust: Insights From a Crustal
Cross Section at the Hess Deep Rift, in
Small-Scale Crustal Heterogeneity,” in
Heterogeneity in
Crust and Upper
Mantle: Nature
Scaling and Seismic
Proptery, edited
by J. Goff and
K. Holliger,
Kluwer/Plenum
Publishing,
2002 (lead
Jeff Karson
author).
• “Internal Structure of Uppermost
Oceanic Crust Along the Western
Blanco Transform Scarp: Implications
for Subaxial Accretion and Deformation
at the Juan de Fuca Ridge,” Journal of
Geophysical Research, 2002 (lead author)
• “Magnetic Anisotropy of Serpentinized
Peridotites from the MARK Area:
Implications for the Orientation of
Mesoscopic Structures and Major Fault
Zones,” Journal of Geophysical Research, 2002
(coauthor)
• “The Geochemistry of Dikes and Lavas
from the North Wall of the Hess Deep
Rift: Insights into the Four-
Dimensional Character of Crustal
Construction at Fast-Spreading Mid-
Ocean Ridges,” Journal of Geophysical
Research, 2002 (coauthor)
Prasad Kasibhatla, associate professor
of environmental chemistry
• “Top-Down Estimate of a Large
Source Of
Atmospheric
Carbon
Monoxide
Associated
with Fuel
Combustion
in Asia,” Journal
of Geophysical
Research, 2002
Prasad Kashibhatla
(lead author)
A. Bradshaw Murray, assistant professor
of geomorphology and coastal processes
• “Contrasting the Goal, Strategies, and
Predictions Associated with Simplified
Numerical Models and Detailed
Simulations,” Prediction in Geomorphology,
Chapter 11, 2003 (author)
• “Seeking Explanation Affects
Numerical-Modeling Strategies,” Earth
and Ocean Sciences, 2002 (author)
Research Associate Jeffrey Pippen
• Butterflies In Your Backyard, North Carolina
Cooperative Extention Publication,
December 2002 (contributor)
William H. Schlesinger, James B.
Duke Professor of Biogeochemistry and
dean of the Nicholas School
• “The Role of Overland Flow in
Sediment and Nitrogen Budgets of
Mesquite Dunefields, Southern New
Mexico,” Journal of Arid Environments, 2003
(coauthor)
• “Species Control Variation in Litter
Decomposition in a Pine Forest Exposed
to Elevated CO2,” Global Change Biology,
2002 (coauthor)
• “The Global Biogeochemical Cycle of
Boron,” Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 2002
(coauthor with Haewon Park MEM ’01)
• “Methane-Limited Methanotrophy in
Tidal Freshwater Swamps,” Global
Biogeochemical Cycles, 2002 (coauthor)
• “Potential Environmental Controls on
Nitrogenase Activity in Biological Crusts
of the Northern Chihuahuan Desert,”
Journal of Arid Environments, 2002 (coauthor)
• “Hydrology-Vegetation Interactions in
Areas of Discontinuous Flow on a Semi-
Arid Bajada, Southern New Mexico,”
Journal of Arid Environments, 2002 (coauthor)
• “The Nitrogen Budget of a Pine Forest
Under Free Air CO2 Enrichment,”
Oceologia, 2002 (coauthor)
• “Relationships Among Soil Carbon
Distributions and Biophysical Factors at
Nested Spatial Scales in Rain Forests of
Northeastern Costa Rica,” Geoderma,
2002 (coauthor)
Craig Stow, visiting assistant professor
of water resources
• “On Monte Carlo Methods for Bayesian
Inference,” Ecological Modelling, 2003
(coauthor)
P.V. Sundareshwar, research associate
and instructor
• “Phosphorus Limitation of Coastal Ecosystem
Processes,” Science, 2003 (lead author)
• “Response of Coastal Wetlands to Rising
Seal Level,” Ecology, 2002 (coauthor)

F ACULTY & STAFF N OTES scope
Jonathan B. Wiener, professor of law
and environmental policy
• “Comparing Precaution in the United
States and Europe,” Journal of Risk Research,
2002 (lead author)
Memberships, Appointments
and Awards
Duke Forest Resource Manager Judson D.
Edeburn has recently been approved for
status as Certified Forester joining the
ranks of more than 1,600 foresters
nationwide. The certificate is a mark of
distinction within the forestry profession
and signifies the individual’s commitment
to provide quality resource stewardship.
The Certified Forester Program is administered
through the Society of American
Foresters (SAF) and was established in
1994. The program is designed to assess
academic preparation, professional experience,
continuing
education, and
adherence to
standards of
professional
practice for
those professionals
engaged
in forestry. SAF
members number
16,000.
Edeburn also has been named
Judson Edeburn
Appalachian Society chair elect for 2003.
He will become chair in 2004 and past
chair in 2005. The Appalachian Society is
one of 33 multi-state/state societies that
make up the national body of Society of
American Foresters.
George Pendergraft, Duke Forest’s
grounds and maintenance supervisor, and
Michael Burke, forestry technician, have
been awarded the 2002 Environmental
Impact Award by the Duke University
Environmental Management Advisory
Committee. Their work was instrumental
in the Forest’s recent attainment of
certification by the Sustainable Forestry
Initiative and Forest Stewardship Council
(SmartWood) programs. Their efforts also
help showcase the Forest and Duke’s com-
dukenvironment
mitment to environmental sustainability to
the more than 250,000 visitors annually.
John W. Terborgh, James B. Duke
Professor of Environmental Science, was
the honoree at an award ceremony where
he gave a talk to the environmental
commission of Peru, a group under the
Peruvian congress. National congresswoman
Fabiola Morales Castillo heads the
environmental commission that consists
of 80 congress people. Terborgh was
presented with a lifetime achievement
award for his contribution to Peruvian
environmental causes. Marcia Toledo,
MEM/MS ’02, an assistant to Congresswoman
Castillo, helped arrange the award
ceremony and speech which was held in
Lima, Peru in January.
Grants
(Grants of $50,000 or more awarded to faculty in
the past six months)
Paul Baker, professor of geology,
National Science Foundation (NSF)
$140,592, “Holocene Geology and
Anthropology: Paleoclimate, Landscape
Evolution, and Human Occupation of the
Western Lake Titicaca Basin, Peru.”
Duration: 2003-06.
Celia J. Bonaventura, professor of
cell biology, Einstein University $147,276,
“Functional Analysis of Engineered
Hemoglobins.” Duration: 2002-03.
Larry B. Crowder, Stephen Toth
Professor of Marine Ecology, Florida State
University $131,900, “PEW Study on
Recreational Fisheries.” Duration: 2002-03.
Gabriele C. Hegerl, associate research
professor, National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration $81,897,
“Connections Between Anthropogenic
Changes in Climate Extremes and Large
Scale Circulation.” Duration: 2002-05.
Rob Jackson, associate professor of
botany and environment, NSF $500,000,
“Ecohydrology of Semiarid Woodlands:
Role of Woody Plants in the Water Cycle.”
Duration: 2002-05; NSF $388,000,
“Continental Drying and Carbon
Sequestration Along a Subambient to
Elevated CO2 Gradient.” Duration:
2002-05; Department of Energy
24
National
Institute for
Global
Environmental
Change
$329,000,
“Precipitation
and Carbon
Rob Jackson
Storage with
Woody Plant Encroachment into
Grasslands.” Duration: 2002-05;
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
$330,000, “Interactions of Water and
Nutrient Cycling by Plants.” Duration:
2002-05.
Lincoln F. Pratson, assistant professor
of sedimentary geology, Office of
Naval Research $92,979, “Modeling the
Impact of Seascape Evolution on the
Seismic Response of Shelf and Slope
Strata.” Duration: 2002-04.
Joseph S. Ramus, professor of biological
oceanography, Z. Smith Reynolds
Foundation Inc. $50,000, “Bridge
Funding for North Carolina FerryMon
Project.” Duration: 2003-04.
Daniel D. Richter, professor of soils
and forest ecology, Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation $500,000 and National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
$165,946, each for “Temporal and
Spatial Reassembly of Soil Microbial
Communities and Organic Matter in
Post-Disturbance Forests.” Duration:
2002-05.
William H. Schlesinger, James B.
Duke Professor of Biogeochemistry and
dean, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
$357,500, Doris Duke Conservation
Fellowship Program. Duration: 2003-06.
compiled by Donna Picard, Nicholas School
Communications

A L UMNI P ROFILE
Bo Shaw:
Forestry– and generosity–
are in his blood
by Laura Ertel
Bartow “Bo” Shaw F’64 grew up in the
forestry business. His great-grandfather
started a lumber mill back in the late
1800s, and as a child, Shaw visited the
family mill often. His father and uncle
sold forest products in their building supply
business, and when his family acquired
some timberland, young Shaw enjoyed
working with the foresters each summer.
So when it came time to choose his field of
study, the decision was easy.
The South Carolinian earned a bachelor
of science degree in forestry at
Clemson University in 1963, then came to
Duke for the one-year master of forestry
program. “I wanted to focus on forest
economics. That’s the main reason I chose
Duke,” he explains. “The Duke faculty was
internationally known; a lot of the old
American forestry textbooks were written
by Duke faculty members.”
Today, Shaw is chairman of American
Forest Management Inc., a consulting
firm that provides services to private and
corporate timberland owners, primarily in
the Southeast and the Lake states, in forest
and land management; also real estate
brokering, investment and appraisal services,
data management and technology and
environmental management. One focus is
helping a variety of timberland owners
develop sustainable forestry systems.
“I feel good to have assembled a group
of really fine, highly competent people in
a company culture that stresses integrity,”
Shaw says. “Working together with a common
goal, we’ve not only provided service
to a lot of people; we’ve also made an
impact on today’s forestry landscape.”
sightings
Shaw and
his wife of 36
years, Vickey,
have four grown
children. It
looks like the
Shaw family’s
forestry lineage
may end at this
generation: as
of now, none have followed in their
father’s woodland footsteps. He is especially
proud of what all four of his children
have accomplished in their chosen
career paths. They all retain a deep appreciation
of the outdoors, of what it can
offer when managed properly, and of what
responsibilities we all have to practice good
stewardship. The Sumter, S.C., resident
has many interests — church, golf, hunting,
fishing and flying (he has had a pilot’s
license for 37 years) — but modestly
claims, “I’m a master of none!”
Shaw says the impact Duke has had on
his career goes far beyond the year he
spent earning his degree. “There’s no
question that the people I was exposed to
while I was at Duke broadened my thought
process. I have maintained contact with
people at the university ever since, getting
input and going back for continuing education
courses to enhance what I know and
what I’m able to pass along. One of the
unique things about Duke is the number of
professional schools there and its interdisciplinary
philosophy. It gives you different
perspectives and broadens your view.”
Much of Shaw’s ongoing connection
with Duke has been maintained through
his contributions as a
volunteer. For 10 years,
he represented the
Nicholas School of the
Environment and Earth
Sciences on the Duke
Annual Fund Executive
Jimmy Wood photo
Committee, and he
remains an active member
of the school’s Board
of Visitors. In 1999, Shaw and his family
established the Bartow Shaw Family
Fellowship to provide support for graduate
students at the Nicholas School.
“I’ve always felt that you can make an
impact by enabling some really capable
and bright young people to take advantage
of what Duke has to offer,” he says. “I
know it’s a cliché, but I’ve always believed
that you receive much more when you
give. Through my involvement with Duke,
I’ve met other people who are giving
because they love the university, and I’ve
made some great friends.”
In appreciation for all that he has
given to this institution and to the field of
forestry, on April 11 Shaw received the
Ralston Distinguished Alumni Award, the
Nicholas School’s highest alumni honor.
It was a small way that Duke could give
back for all that the university has received
from this generous gentleman.
Laura Ertel is a freelance writer based in Durham,
N.C. She writes regularly for programs and publications
at Duke and other North Carolina universities,
organizations, and companies.

Class Notes
C LASS N OTES
dukenvironment
sightings
Warren T. Doolittle MF’50 has stepped down after 18 years as president
of the International Society of Tropical Foresters, but he still
volunteers to help the staff.
Leigh R. Kerr MEM’75 was elected president-elect of the Florida
Planning and Zoning Association. Kerr is president of Leigh
Robinson Kerr & Associates Inc., a land use, planning and consulting
firm, which has been based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for
the past 18 years.
Chandler C. Smith F’75 is president of Summit Management
Resources in Denver, Colo. His wife, Peggy, is a speech therapist
in the Brighton Public Schools.
Richard Early MF’84 has recently transferred from the Washington
office of the Plum Creek Timber Co. to the northwest region
office in Columbia Falls, Mont. He was promoted to be Northwest
Region GIS/Inventory Manager. He is responsible for the company’s
activities in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.
Sandra Postel
MEM’80 has
been named
by Scientific
American as
one of the
“Scientific
American 50”
in recognition
of accomplishments
that demonstrate a “clear, progressive view
of the technological future, and the leadership,
knowledge and expertise needed to
make that vision a reality.” Postel, who
directs the Global Water Policy Project in
Amherst, Mass., was honored in the magazine’s
December 2002 issue as Policy
Leader in Agriculture for advocating
sweeping changes aimed at preserving the
world’s dwindling supplies of freshwater.
“Few challenges loom as large as meeting
the food and water needs of the
world’s growing population while at the
same time protecting the freshwater
ecosystems that sustain life,” she said.
“Meeting this challenge requires fundamental
shifts in how we use, value and
manage the earth’s finite freshwater.”
In 1991, the Nicholas School recognized
Postel for her contributions to her
field with the Ralston Distinguished
Alumni Award.
A leading authority on global freshwater
issues, Postel speaks at conferences and
universities and has published extensively.
26
John Warfield Simpson MF’86 recently published Yearning for the
Land: A Search for the Importance of Place. He also has authored Visions of
Paradise: Glimpses of Our Landscape’s Legacy. Simpson is a professor of
landscape architecture and natural resources at Ohio State. In
2001, he was a visiting research scholar at Heriot-Watt University
in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Jonathan A. Moyer F’88 joined the Canon Capital Management
Group of Telford, Penn., in July as an investment advisor for the
Investment Advisory business unit. Moyer and his family live in
Franconia Township.
Hsing-Yi Chang F’89 is now the assistant investigator in the
Division of Health Policy of the National Health Research
Institutes in Taipei, Taiwan.
spotlight
Nicholas School Alum Named One of Scientific American 50
Her new book on river conservation —
which follows her Pillar of Sand: Can the
Irrigation Miracle Last? and Last Oasis — is due
out this summer. She is a senior fellow at
Worldwatch Institute and a visiting senior
lecturer in environmental studies at
Mount Holyoke College.
“My Duke education was great preparation
for the work I have been engaged in
for the last 20 years. Water problems are
inherently interdisciplinary — spanning
science, technology, economics, policy,
law and ethics. Thanks in no small part to
my time and training at Duke, I am comfortable
in this interdisciplinary zone.”
— Laura Ertel

C LASS N OTES
Stephanie Stansbury Dobbie T’94 was married to Jim Dobbie on
Aug. 3, 2002. Stephanie and Jim live in Albuquerque where she
serves as the program coordinator for a nonprofit education
reform organization, New Mexico Education Network Center.
In November, Michael J. Zucchet MEM’94 was elected to represent
District 2 on the City Council of San Diego, Calif. Zucchet has
been working as the legislative and community affairs director for
the San Diego City Fire Fighters since 1998.
Marjut Hadisa Herzog MEM’96 has just returned to the United
States after five years working with NGOs and the United Nations
Development Programme in Venezuela. Herzog and her husband,
Jonathan B’97, who was transferred to Florida, are now living in
Aventura while Marjut looks for work in Miami.
Lydia Breunig MEM’97 received a Fulbright grant for dissertation
research in Mexico. She and her husband, Brian Stark, will spend
nine months researching how the recent creation of natural
protected areas are influencing rural people and resources.
Tim Hanley MEM’97 and his wife, Wanda, announce the birth of
their third son, Sean Robert. Sean was born on Oct. 18.
Cynthia Van Der Wiele MEM’98 is a doctoral candidate in environmental
and community design at North Carolina State
University College of Design. She is studying the adoption of sustainable
natural resource management practices by Liberian smallholder
farmers.
Erika Nystrom Sasser PhD’99 and her husband, Fuller, are
pleased to announce the birth of their son, James Fuller Sasser,
on Sept. 22.
Jean Lauer MEM’00 is living in Menlo Park in California and
working for the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST), which manages
open space and agricultural lands on the San Francisco
Peninsula.
This past summer Brad Rogers MEM’00 authored a play that was
produced onstage in Baltimore. Entitled A Certain Mystery, the play
concerns a murder at a highbrow college. Rogers wrote in the program
notes that his play is conceived to work on two levels. At base,
it’s a mystery: Dr. Randall Scott, Haverton University’s brash philosophy
professor, gets clocked over the head with a candlestick.
The college hires psych major-cum-pricey private investigator Will
Bartlett to investigate. Whodunit? You’ll have to see the play to
find out!
Jennifer E. Ryan T’00 is in her second year of grad school at
Scripps Institution of Oceanography working on biochemical
studies of bryostatin biosynthesis. “I owe it all to Dr. Dan
(Rittschof) for getting me interested in marine natural products
and chemical ecology.”
Timothy O’Connor F’01 sends word that he is “fighting crime in
San Francisco. I have a shiny badge and write BIG tickets to oil
refineries that pollute the air. I started law school in January. I am
getting my certification in hazardous materials management and I
just got back from a Middle East peacekeeping tour.”
John E. Terborgh F’02 is on a 10-month assignment in Amman,
Jordan on a project supported by the U.S. Agency for
International Development. He is working as a marketing adviser
for the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature.
Susan Watts Chinn MEM’02 was married to Chris Chinn in June
2002. Susan’s twin sister, Sarah Watts MEM’00, was her maid of
honor. Sue and Chris are now living in Cambridge, Mass.
Dana Wusinich-Mendez MEM’02 is working at the Coastal
Programs Division of the Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource
Management (OCRM) on Coral Reef Task Force efforts in Puerto
Rico, the Virgin Islands and Florida.

C AMPAIGN N E W S nature&
Nicholas School Surpasses Campaign Goal,
But ‘Buckets’ Still Need to be Filled
The Nicholas School surpassed its campaign goal of $60 million
on Dec. 20 through the generosity of alumni and friends.
“On behalf of the entire Nicholas
School community, I want to thank
each donor for his or her generosity
to the campaign,” said Peggy Dean
Glenn, associate dean for external
affairs at the Nicholas School. “The
financial support of individuals and
organizations enables the school to
excel in the arena of environmental
education where expectations are high
and quality is paramount.”
Sally Kleberg
Help ‘Fill A Bucket’ and Imprint Your
‘Signature’ on the Nicholas School
Everyone hopes to leave his or her mark
on the world. An innovative matching
opportunity can assist donors who wish
to imprint their “signature” on the Nicholas
School while helping to “fill the endowment
bucket.”
The Signature Venture Endowment
is the brainchild of anonymous donors who
wanted to assist other friends of the school
in establishing endowments that would
support the donor’s special interests. Designed
to provide maximum flexibility for both
the donor and the school, these unique
endowments may be designated for student
support, faculty support or as venture capital
for new programs, courses, and initiatives.
For each $750,000 contributed by a
signature donor, anonymous donors will
contribute $250,000, creating a $1 million
naming opportunity.
dukenvironment
nurture
“In today’s competitive admissions
environment, increasing our financial aid
pool is vital,” said Cynthia A. Peters,
director of enrollment services. “Establishing
a Signature Venture Scholarship Endowment
would fund multiple full-tuition scholarships,
and scholars would forever carry the
name of the donor or honoree of the fund.
For example, with a gift of $750,000 the
Smith family could establish the ‘Smith
Society of Fellows’ for support of multiple
students aided by a $250,000 contribution
from our matching donors.”
“The dean and the development staff
will work closely with each donor to create an
endowment that reflects his or her personal
interests while meeting the greatest needs
of the school,” said Anita Brown, director
of advancement. “If a donor wishes, the
fund could provide both scholarship and
28
“We are thrilled to pass our dollar goal a full year before the
end of the campaign,” said Sally Kleberg, chair of the Nicholas
School Campaign Committee. “What a wonderful holiday gift for
our students, faculty, and staff. I would also like to add my thanks
to all the donors, staff, board members and volunteers who made
this dream a reality. It was a huge and unselfish effort on the part
of everyone involved and our success demonstrates our dedication
to the school and our belief in its mission. ”
On the day that the goal was surpassed, the school received 17
gifts to the Annual Fund and three restricted gifts. It is the men
and women who have made the decision to continue to invest at
every level in the work of the Nicholas School who have made this
feat possible, said Kleberg.
Gifts from the campaign already are working to strengthen the
Nicholas School by supporting endowed professorships, student
scholarships, faculty research, academic programs and other projects.
programmatic support. A faculty fund could
provide support for research and teaching
for junior or senior faculty, to establish new
research programs, or to underwrite marine
operations at the Duke Marine Lab.”
Environmental emergencies, such as
those created by Hurricane Floyd or the
events of Sept. 11, could also be addressed
with a Signature Venture Endowment. The
fund could provide critical dollars to assist
in the study of toxins released in the atmosphere
after an explosion or the effects of
flooding on estuaries, native animal, marine
and plant life, or the coastline.
If you would like additional information
about Signature Venture Endowments or
other funding opportunities, please contact
Anita Brown, director of advancement, at
919-613-8019 or anita.brown@duke.edu.

C AMPAIGN N E W S
Kleberg said that raising $60 million, though a great accomplishment,
will carry the school only so far toward its goal. “While
we have raised more than we anticipated by this time, we have not
yet accomplished what we have called ‘filling all the buckets,’
which means funding every priority identified at the start of
the campaign.”
Through a strategic planning process, critical needs were
identified and prioritized at the school, with fellowship support
identified as the number one priority. In addition, completing
the funding for the Ocean Sciences Teaching Center and
continued growth in the annual fund and endowment are
essential, said Kleberg.
“We see this as a short intermission.” said Kleberg. “We’ve
completed act one, now on to act two.”
Campaign
Total
Endowment
Goal $45.5 million
Progress $38.3 million
Campaign Progress
and Goals
as of 3/22/03
Goal $60 million
Progress $60.7 million
Ocean Sciences
Teaching
Center
Goal $1.5 million
Progress $500,000
Restricted
Programs
Goal $7.5 million
Progress $9.03 million
Endowed Professorships Created or Enhanced During
the Campaign for Duke
Doris Duke Professorship in Conservation Ecology
Dan and Bunny Gabel Associate Professorship in Environmental Ethics
The Korstian Professorship in Forest Resource Management
Nicholas Professorship in Earth Systems Science
Nicholas Professorship in Environmental Economics and Policy
Nicholas Professorship in Environmental Quality
Nicholas Professorship in Natural Resource Ecology
Truman and Nellie Semans /Alex Brown & Sons Associate Professorship
Lee Hill Snowdon Professorship
Rachel Carson Professorship in Marine Conservation Biology
Rachel Carson Professorship in Marine Affairs and Policy
Endowed Fellowships and Scholarships Created or Enhanced
During the Campaign for Duke
Lawrence E. Blanchard Endowment
Bookhout Scholarship Fund
Whitney Lawson Chamberlin Memorial Endowment
Norman L. Christensen Jr. Fellowship Endowment
William Cleveland Fellowship Endowment
Timothy J. and Anne G. Creem Scholarship Endowment
Cummings Family Fellowship
LeRoy George Scholarship
Laura J. Grierson Memorial Scholarship
Charlotte and Robert Hay Endowment
Richard Heintzelman Family Fellowship Endowment
Tim and Karen Hixon Wildlife Conservation Endowment
Lawrence I'Anson Jr. Scholarship Fund
Thomas W. Keesee Jr. Fellowship Endowment
Kuzimer-Lee-Nikitine Endowment
Thomas Vaclav Laska Memorial
Melanie Lynn Memorial Scholarship Endowment
Nicholas Fellowships in Environmental Sciences and Policy
Nicholas School of the Environment Alumni Fellowships Endowment
Nicholas School of the Environment Professional Student Fellowship Endowment
Orvis Fellowship Endowment
Orrin Pilkey Fellowship Endowment
Elizabeth Reid Endowment
Nancy and Simon B. Rich Fellowship
Gary H. Salenger Fellowship Endowment
Bartow Shaw Family Fellowship Endowment
Thomas and Anne Shepherd Endowment
Edward and Joyce Sitz Endowment
Harvey W. Smith Graduate Fellowship Endowment
Deborah Susan Steer Scholarship Fund
Syngenta Crop Protection Inc. Fellowship
Yasuomi Tanaka Memorial Fellowship
Wade Family Endowment
John and Sue Wall Fellowship Endowment
Dr. Larry R.Widell Memorial Fellowship Endowment

Joe Ramus
A NNUAL F UND N E W S nature&
Orvis Fellowship Endowment Fund Established
The Orvis Fellowship Endowment Fund was established with combined
gifts of $100,000 from The Perkins Charitable Foundation,
the Orvis-Perkins Foundation, and the Leigh H. Perkins Charitable
Lead Trust. The new fellowship will benefit students in the Masters of
Environmental Management program.
“My good friend, John D. Drinko, told me about the important
work going on at the Nicholas School. My own interest in the work
of The Nature Conservancy and the challenges facing it and other
conservation organizations led the foundations to make this commitment,”
said Leigh H. Perkins, president of the Orvis-Perkins Foundation
and a trustee of The Perkins Charitable Foundation.
“Conservation organizations are having difficulty finding
site-based generalists —individuals trained in natural resource management,
communications, policy and law. These are precisely the
kind of professionals trained in the Nicholas School MEM program.”
“The Orvis Fellowship is a wonderful addition to our program,”
Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation Inc.
Funds Coastal Projects
The Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation Inc. has
awarded grants totaling $100,000 to the
Nicholas School to benefit the FerryMon
Project and The Duke Program for the
Study of Developed Shorelines (PSDS).
“The Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation is
delighted to be able to support the Nicholas
School and the work of the FerryMon
Project and the Program for the Study of
Developed Shorelines. Both projects have
great potential to assist efforts to protect and
improve North Carolina’s unique and fragile
environment,” said Tom Ross, executive
director of the foundation.
If you thought ferries were only used to
transport vehicles across large bodies of
water, think again. Scientists also are using
ferries to monitor water quality. The
Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System
(APES) is North America’s second largest
estuary and provides critical habitat for the
Orrin Pilkey
dukenvironment
nurture
southeastern U.S. fishery. Presently, several,
interrelated factors impact water quality in
the APES including land use change in the
upland and coastal watershed, legislatively
mandated basinwide nutrient management
plans, intense storms (hurricanes and
nor’easters), and global and local changes in
sea level.
Despite its importance as essential fish
habitat, the APES has not been monitored as
intensively or extensively for habitat impacts
associated with decreased water quality as
other estuaries, such as Chesapeake Bay. To
support the sustainable use of these estuaries,
the Nicholas School joined with the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
the NC Department of Transportation Ferry
Division, the NC Department of
Environment and Natural Resources, and
the AllTel Corp. to develop an automated
water quality monitoring system aboard ferries
that traverse the APES. The FerryMon
program provides a unique, long-term and
cost-effective monitoring system to evaluate
status and trends in APES water quality.
“Thanks to the generosity of the Z.
Smith Reynolds Foundation, the M/Vs Floyd
Lupton, Carteret, and Governor Hyde will continue
to provide important information on water
quality in APES. We are extremely grateful
for the foundation’s support,” said Joe
Ramus, professor of biological oceanography,
former director of the Duke University
Marine Laboratory, and co-director of the
FerryMon project.
30
stated Dean William H. Schlesinger. “I am not surprised that conservation
organizations are having difficulty hiring the talent they need.
There is an extremely competitive market for our graduates. In fact,
98 percent of our graduates are employed in their chosen field within
six months of graduation. The solution to the problem is at the other
end of the pipeline — enabling more bright
and talented young people to enter the environmental
field. The Orvis Fellowship will
allow the Nicholas School to offer funding
to a student who might otherwise stay in
another field because they could not afford
the cost of an environmental education.”
If you would like additional information
about fellowships or other funding opportunities,
please contact Anita Brown,
director of advancement, at 919-613-8019
or anita.brown@duke.edu.
Leigh H. Perkins
Dr. Orrin Pilkey, James B. Duke
Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences and
director of the Program for the Study of
Developed Shorelines (PSDS), agrees with
Ramus. “The Z. Smith Reynolds
Foundation not only supports the important
work of PSDS, but has also provided us with
an opportunity to expand and fulfill an
exciting and important new role, that of
scientific advocate.”
PSDS is dedicated to conserving, preserving
and protecting the quality and longterm
sustainability of North Carolina’s
beaches and has established a scientific
coastal advocacy initiative to ensure that state
and local management decisions and actions
that affect the health, viability and long-term
sustainability of the state’s beaches are made
in the context of “good” science and are in
the best interest of all North Carolinians.
PSDS provides objective technical and
scientific data to organizations around the
country working to preserve our nation’s
beaches. According to Pilkey, “Scientific
advocacy is very rare, and we are fortunate that
the folks at Z. Smith Reynolds had the foresight
to see the benefits in what we are doing.”
PSDS was established in 1985 to examine
the physical and scientific basis for managing
developed shorelines in a time of rising sea
level. Since its inception, PSDS has been an
outspoken advocate for the responsible
management of America’s shorelines and
has made significant contributions in the
fields of coastal geology, policy and hazard
mitigation.

A NNUAL F UND N E W S
gift clubs
Duke University Gift Club Levels
William Preston Few Association
President’s Executive Council
$25,000 Minimum Gift
President’s Council
$10,000 Minimum Gift
Few Associates
$5,000 Minimum Gift
Washington Duke Club
Washington Duke Club Fellow
$2,500 Minimum Gift
Washington Duke Club Member
$1,000 Minimum Gift
Washington Duke Young Alumni Member
Duke University undergraduates 5-9 years
post-graduation may join for $300. Duke
University undergraduates 0-4 years postgraduation
may join for $100.
Nicholas School Gift Clubs
Clarence F. Korstian Society
$500 or more to the Nicholas School of the
Environment
A.S. Pearse Society
$500 or more to the Duke University Marine
Laboratory
Nicholas School
Young Alumni Member
Individuals who have graduated from the
Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth
Sciences in the last four years may join the
Korstian or Pearse Society for $100.
For additional information, contact the Office of Alumni
Affairs & the Annual Fund at the Nicholas School of the
Environment and Earth Sciences
P. O. Box 90328, Durham, NC 27708-0328
919-613-8035 (phone) 919-613-8077 (fax)
k.bolfill@duke.edu
“
Beaufort Experience Weekend
July 25-27, 2003
Duke University • Marine Lab in Beaufort, NC
Plan to Attend This Weekend of Adventure, Discovery and Fun!
Join us for presentations of the latest faculty research, a cruise on the
R/V Susan Hudson, field trips to Cape Lookout and other ecologically
important sites, a waterfront reception and an authentic seafood feast.
There will be supervised educational activities for children and
grandchildren — fun for the entire family.
Nicholas School or Marine Lab donors at the Korstian, Pearse, Washington
Duke and William Preston Few Gift Club levels and their families are
invited. Gift Clubs are for cumulative giving during the fiscal year
2002-2003. Make your gift club level contribution by June 30 to
receive your invitation.
Annual Fund support from our alumni, parents and friends enables us to
do many things that enrich the daily life of students at the Nicholas School.
These include distinguished speakers, field trips, special hardware and
software, and the development of career skills. If you are ever tempted to
think that your support is not important — please reconsider! Every gift to
the Nicholas School, regardless of its size, counts in a big way for our students
and for the environment. William H. Schlesinger, Dean
”

Mark your calendar for the following dates and monitor our Web site at
www.env.duke.edu for additional events:
Upcoming Events/Monitor
May 3, 2003
Book Signing
Orrin H. Pilkey and Mary Edna Fraser will be
signing A Celebration of the World’s Barrier
Islands at the annual meeting of the NC
Coastal Federation, signing is from 1:30-3 pm.
A field trip will also start at 8:30 am to
Bear Island.
Hammock Beach State Park, Swansboro, NC
Contact: Coastal Federation (252) 393-8185
May 7-9, 2003
Native Americans and the U.S. Government
A course that will examine the historical and
legal underpinnings of the government-togovernment
relationship between the U.S.
government and American Indian tribes.
Duke University
Contact: Nicholas Office of Continuing and
Executive Education, (919) 613-8082
May 11-14, 2003
American Association of Petroleum
Geologists Annual Meeting
Salt Lake City, Utah
Contact: AAPG, (800) 364-2274
or convene@aapg.org
Duke University Alumni Reception
AAPG
Salt Lake City, Utah
Contact: Ron Perkins, (919) 684-3376
or rperkins@duke.edu
dukenvironment
32
May 10-11, 2003
Commencement Weekend
Duke University
May 28-30, 2003
The Law of NEPA
Duke University
Contact: Nicholas Office of Continuing and
Executive Education, (919) 613-8082
June 16, 2003
Book Signing
Orrin H. Pilkey and Mary Edna Fraser will be
signing A Celebration of the World’s Barrier
Islands, sponsored by SC Coastal
Conservation League
Charleston, SC
Contact: Heather Spires (843) 723-8035
or heathers@scccl.org
July 25-27, 2003
Beaufort Experience Weekend for Nicholas School
Gift Club members
Duke University Marine Laboratory
Beaufort, N.C.
Contact: Carol Dahm, (919) 613-8001
or cdahm@duke.edu
Aug. 3-8, 2003
Ecological Society of America (ESA)
Savannah, Ga.
Contact: ESA, (202) 833-8773 or
www.esa.org
monitor
Aug. 6-8, 2003
Making the NEPA Process More Efficient: Scoping
and Public Participation
Duke University
Contact: Nicholas Office of Continuing and
Executive Education, (919) 613-8082
September 2003
National Geographic Society Dinner and Lecture
For Nicholas School and Duke Marine Lab
members of William Preston Few Gift
Club Association
Washington, D.C.
Contact: Office of External Affairs,
(919) 613-8003
Sept. 15-19, 2003
Preparing and Documenting Environmental
Impact Analyses
Duke University
Contact: Nicholas Office of Continuing and
Executive Education, (919) 613-8082
Sept. 20, 2003
New Student Day
Duke University Marine Lab
Beaufort, NC
Contact: Belinda Williford, (252) 504-7508
or bbw@duke.edu

Oct. 24-26, 2003
Parents’ Weekend at the Coast
Duke University Marine Lab
Beaufort, NC
Contact: Belinda Williford, (252) 504-7508
or bbw@duke.edu
Oct. 25-29, 2003
Society of American Foresters (SAF)
National Convention
Buffalo, N.Y.
Contact: Rita Baur, (919) 613-8003
or rbaur@duke.edu
Or www.safnet.org/calendar/natcon.htm
Oct. 26, 2003
Society of American Foresters (SAF)
National Convention
Alumni Social
Buffalo, N.Y.
Contact: Rita Baur, (919) 613-8003
or rbaur@duke.edu
eco audit
Oct. 31, 2003
Nicholas School Prospective MEM/MF
Students Visitation Day
Duke University
Contact: Enrollment Services,
(919) 613-8070, or envadm@duke.edu
to reserve a place.
Nov. 2-5, 2003
Geological Society of America Annual Meeting
Seattle, Wash.
Don’t miss the Duke University Alumni event
honoring Orrin Pilkey!
Contact: Krista Bofill, (919) 613-8035,
or kbofill@duke.edu
Nov. 3-7, 2003
Implementation of NEPA on Federal Lands
and Facilities
Duke University
Contact: Nicholas Office of Continuing and
Executive Education, (919) 613-8082
March 8-9, 2004
Third Annual Environmental Leadership Forum:
Energy and the Environment.
R. David Thomas Executive Conference Center
Duke University
Contact: Laura Turcotte, (919) 613-8081
or ljturco@duke.edu
April 16-18, 2004
Alumni Reunion Weekend
Duke University
Contact: Krista Bofill, (919) 613-8035,
or kbofill@duke.edu
April 17, 2004
Field Day
Duke University
Contact: Krista Bofill, (919) 613-8035,
or kbofill@duke.edu
How to contact us:
Nicholas School of the Environment
and Earth Sciences
Office of External Affairs
Duke University
Box 90328
Durham, NC 27708-0328
(919) 613-8003 phone
(919) 613-8077 fax
www.env.duke.edu
Duke University Marine Laboratory
135 Duke Marine Lab Road
Beaufort, NC 28516-9721
(252) 504-7503 phone
(252) 504-7648 fax
dukenvironment is printed with vegetable-based inks on
100% recycled paper. Please recycle this magazine.

dukenvironment
N ICHOLAS S CHOOL OF THE E NVIRONMENT AND E ARTH S CIENCES
Spring 2003
N ON- PROFIT O RG.
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D URHAM, N C
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N ICHOLAS S CHOOL OF THE E NVIRONMENT AND E ARTH S CIENCES
D UKE U NIVERSITY
B OX 90328 DURHAM, N ORTH C AROLINA 27708