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Hannah Orton and Risa McNellis disassembling the Shad eddy flux tower. Photo by Risa McNellis.
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Announcements
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The field season has officially come to a close! All three boats have been winterized until the spring. The Rowley House is closed for the winter, but the Marshview house will remain open if you need housing. Please continue to fill out the Housing Request Form if you plan to stay overnight.
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Nell Bowen and Emma Rosser docking at Shad while under the watchful eye of a gull. Photo by Risa McNellis.
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Please have any new graduate students working at PIE fill out this form. This will add them to the email list and Slack community. If you would like to be added to the email list and Slack but are not a graduate student, e-mail Risa.
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We are seeking nominations for Graduate Student Representative to replace Camila, who is rotating off at the next PIE All Scientist Meeting. This is a two-year commitment that involves attending monthly meetings with the other LTER graduate representatives and the PIE Executive Committee, creating engagement opportunities for PIE students, and keeping students up-to-date on opportunities at the LTER Network. It is a great opportunity to gain professional development working directly with an NSF organization and to network with other young professionals. If you would like to nominate someone or yourself, please e-mail Risa with your nominations by February 6, 2026.
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The LTER Photo Competition has officially begun! Sites are going head-to-head in four rounds of two brackets – BEST day in the field vs. TOUGHEST day in the field. Vote for PIE's submission from Matt Costa now on the @lter_community Instagram account!
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The Bowen Lab toughing it out on a rainy day at Law's Point. Photo by Matt Costa.
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The PIE LTER and related projects had an amazing showing at the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation (CERF) Biannual Conference last week in Richmond, Virginia. Several PIE researchers gave presentations showing off the breadth of research that we do here at PIE and Mya Darsan, our Graduate Student Representative, won an award for the best graduate student oral presentation.
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Right: Mya Darsan with her award for the best Graduate Student Oral Presentation.
Below left to right: Lucia Ramirez-Joseph (UGA) presenting her poster; Matt Costa, Stephanie Tsui, Randall Hughes, Mya Darsan, and Sa'ad Rafie (Northeastern) at the awards ceremony; Sam Kelsey, Emma Rosser, and Nancy Yang (MBL) at the poster presentation.
Photos by Anne Giblin.
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Thank you to everyone who participated in the PIE LTER Summer 2025 BioBlitz! We had a whopping total of 860 observations of 315 different species. Congratulations to Elizabeth Oliver (with 263 observations and 148 species) and Claire Curran (with 246 observations and 106 species) for winning the top two spots! Both were awarded a PIE hat, an MBL dry bag, and a copy of The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
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Left to right: Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica) 📷 Elizabeth Oliver; Winners Elizabeth Oliver (right) and Claire Curran (left) with their prizes; Amphipod Orchestia grillus that has been infected by a parasitic trematode (Levinseniella byrdi), which has turned it orange! 📷 Claire Curran.
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Risa, the PIE Information Manager (IM), is now representing PIE on the LTER Network IM Executive Committee as the co-chair for a three year term. The IM Executive Committee manages IM Committee operations, plans and leads monthly meetings, and leads interactions with the LTER Network to connect work done at individual sites with the Network as a whole.
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The National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) just launched a new series of conversation guides designed to support interdisciplinary teams tackling complex environmental challenges. Each cheat sheet includes a brief overview, why it matters, and actionable steps or templates. Topics range from authorship and data management to facilitation techniques, storytelling, and GitHub workflows.
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Slice of PIE
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Clams!
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The Northeastern team retrieving clam boxes from the mud flat. Photo by Hannah Orton.
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David Kimbro, Jon Grabowski, Wendi White, and Gillian Nichols from Northeastern University harvested and processed 14 clam recruitment boxes, which exclude most predators, during a long day on October 21, starting at sunrise. Box contents were sieved and clams and other macrofauna were preserved. Data from these boxes, together with data from a mid-season harvest by REU Lindsey Davis (see August newsletter) will help answer questions about soft-shell clam recruitment in PIE estuaries, and whether poor recruitment or predation may be responsible for a decline in the fishery. (Look at what was in a single box! – what do you think?) Thanks to Hannah Orton for ferrying the team out to The Great Marsh Shellfish Company farm, and to Brenden Doyle and Lindsey Wishart for use of the site!
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Contents of a clam box. Photo by David Kimbro.
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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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