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Marsh Madness photo contest winner "Fieldwork doesn’t stop at sunset" by Lucia Ramirez-Joseph.
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Announcements
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The houses and boats are open for the summer! If you are visiting PIE and would like to request housing, please check housing availability on the PIE Housing Calendar and complete the Boat & Housing Request Form. All boat users must have a Massachusetts boating license and complete a field checkout with PIE staff. To coordinate boat use or if you have any questions, e-mail us at piefacilities@mbl.edu. Learn more about our research facilities on our website.
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Photo by Jane Tucker.
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Please remember to register with us this year. Registering helps us keep track of everyone involved in the PIE LTER for mandatory NSF reporting and ensures that you receive important announcements and updates!
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PIE LTER is on Instagram! You can tag the us at @pie_lter to share all your research related photos with the world!
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Monday Meetups are returning this summer. They will kick off on June 8 and continue every other week until August 17. Meetups are from around 6pm to 8pm at the Marshview House in Byfield and are a great opportunity to socialize with fellow researchers and learn about new topics and skills in an informal environment. We are currently recruiting host volunteers (sign up here) and if you have a request for a topic, please e-mail Mya Darsan or Lucia Ramirez-Joseph.
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Photo by Lucia Ramirez-Joseph.
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We are holding the second annual iNaturalist Bioblitz this summer. Last year we had 13 observers record 859 iNaturalist observations while working at PIE; let’s see if we can beat that record! If you want to participate in the Bioblitz you can sign up here.
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Photo by Elizabeth Oliver.
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The final LTER Book Club of the Spring will be on May 27 6:30pm EDT to wrap up discussion of Braiding Sweetgrass. Special guest Dillon Osleger, science writer and geomorphologist (& LTER alum), will join the group at 7pm to discuss his new book, Trail Work: Restoring the Paths and Stories of America’s Public Lands. All are welcome – whether you’ve read the book or not.
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The Critical Ecology Lab and the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation are hosting the Invisible Impacts Symposium, a two-day virtual symposium June 8-9 exploring how social and ecological perspectives can come together to better understand long-term environmental change. Bringing together ecological scientists and social science scholars, this event will explore quantitative and conceptual linkages between historical processes and measurable environmental change.
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There will be an LTER Network Onboarding on July 8 from 12-1pm EDT for new LTER members to learn about the integrative science and opportunities that being part of a national network can open up. The LTER network onboarding provides a brief introduction to the immense variety of research that is carried out across the Network and where to find network-level resources and offer an introduction to the data systems of the LTER Network.
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The LTER Network Office is accepting proposals for 2026 Synthesis Groups. LTER synthesis working groups support collaboration on among-site comparisons, modeling and forecasting, scaling exercises, and many other types of questions. Funding is expected to be available for two projects of two years in duration. The LTER core thematic areas are especially accessible for synthesis, but proposals in other areas are also welcome. Proposals are due September 16, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. PST and awards will be announced in November 2026. For more information, see the solicitation.
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) will be releasing vacancy announcements soon that may be of particular interest to early career scientists and engineers. The agency seeks to recruit early-career scientists and engineers in the roles of Science Assistant and Science/Engineering Analyst. These career opportunities will be found on the NSF career webpage’s listing of current job openings. Applications must be submitted through USAJobs. The announcements will each be open for a brief period, so early action is encouraged. Please share this announcement with your colleagues who may find it of interest, including recent graduates and students nearing the completion of their studies.
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Slice of PIE
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PIE graduate student Elizabeth Oliver awarded NSF GRFP
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Elizabeth Oliver holding a female fiddler crab at PIE.
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I am a scientist in David Johnson’s lab at William & Mary’s Batten School & Virginia Institute of Marine Science, where I study how climate change-driven range expansions are reshaping salt marsh ecosystems. My work focuses on the fiddler crab, Minuca pugnax, a species whose northward expansion has raised new ecological questions for marshes along the Atlantic coast. I joined the Johnson lab this past summer for fieldwork at the Plum Island Ecosystems Long-Term Ecological Research site, where I gained first-hand experience of the Great Marsh and the community PIE brings into research. Over the course of the season, I conducted surveys of fiddler crab burrow density and occupancy using an endoscope affectionately known as the “burrow scope” to document how crabs are using the marsh landscape.
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Before beginning my graduate studies, I interned at the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in New Hampshire, where I also investigated fiddler crab burrow density and occupancy patterns. During that time, I assisted with broader estuarine monitoring programs, contributing to surveys of blue crabs, horseshoe crabs, and lobsters throughout the systems. A fun fact about that summer is that I got to hold osprey fledglings as they got banded. These experiences helped shape my interest in how shifting species distributions influence coastal habitats.
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Being a recipient of the NSF GRFP award will provide me the opportunity to devote research towards understanding impacts of range expansions on ecosystem dynamics and differences between expanded and historical populations. Looking ahead, my research will examine how expanding fiddler crab populations affect marsh sediment and plant carbon storage as well as overall marsh stability. I also plan to investigate the lower thermal limits of M. pugnax and explore how their burrows may serve as thermal refuges in newly colonized habitats. This work will continue at the PIE LTER site, where I will also help mentor an undergraduate William & Mary student completing her honors thesis. She will join me in the field this summer as we carry out the next phase of this research.
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Photo credit: David Johnson.
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Elizabeth setting up cages in the salt marshes of Virginia.
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Recent Publications
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Limnology and Oceanography: Methods
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Jordi Palacios, Hangjie Lin, Cedric Fichot, Sergio Fagherazzi
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Journal of Crustacean Biology
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Valerie N. Acosta-Rodríguez, Rachel Cole, Dillon Doomstorm, Serina S. Wittyngham, David S. Johnson
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Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences
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Amirhossein Noori, Giovanna Nordio, Dannielle Pratt, Tyler Messerschmidt, Sean Fettrow, Angelia L. Seyfferth, Matthew Kirwan, Holly A. Michael, Sergio Fagherazzi
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Kunhui Huang, Mark Schuerch, Sergio Fagherazzi, Zezheng Liu, Zhan Hu
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Aoyang He, Zhijun Dai, Xuefei Mei, Jinping Cheng, Sergio Fagherazzi, Zhenzhong Zeng
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Adriana Parra, S. Belhadj-Aissa, A. Christensen, S. Fagherazzi, M. Simard
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Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences
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Mingyu Zhang, Xun Cai, Nathaniel B. Weston, Zelun Wu, Anne E. Giblin, Christopher W. Hunt, Samuel S. Tsao, Nikki H. Zhang, Peter A. Raymond
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Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science
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Carmine Donatelli, Cedric Fichot, Sergio Fagherazzi
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We have 8 new or updated data packages! Thanks to everyone who submitted their data this spring.
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The PIE LTER Newsletter is a forum for sharing news, opportunities, and activities from across the PIE LTER Community. If you have an announcement, workshop, job opportunity, or recent publication that would interest our community, please send them to pie_im@mbl.edu.
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