• Professor, Department of Natural Resources
• Undergraduate Program Coordinator, Environmental Sciences

Research

Most of my research this year focused on the Harvard Forest and Hubbard Brook Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites. For Harvard Forest, we continued out long-term nitrogen deposition experiment, now the longest running in the US. I also have been co-editing with David Foster a volume summarizing all of the research activities at the Harvard Forest over the last 100 years. For Hubbard Brook, we have completed an analysis of the factors controlling the puzzling record of nitrate loss over the last 35 years, and have been able to conclude that a combination of extreme interannual variability in rainfall in the 1960s and 1970s combined with a defoliation event explains much of this pattern.

We have now refocused on modeling of eddy covariance measurements of carbon flux over forest ecosystems and will be applying the same methodology used at Hubbard Brook to this unique source of information on forest metabolism.

Graduate Students

Primary Teaching Responsibilities

• NR 730/830: Terrestrial Ecosystems
• NR 444H: Dynamics of a Changing Earth

View Natural Resources undergraduate course descriptions
View Natural Resources graduate course descriptions

Selected Publications

Aber, J.D., W.H. McDowell, K.J. Nadelhoffer, A. Magill, G. Berntson, M. Kamakea, S.G. McNulty, W. Currie, L. Rustad and I. Fernandez. 1998. Nitrogen saturation in temperate forest ecosystems: hypotheses revisited. BioScience 48:921-934

Aber, J.D. and R. Freuder. 2000. Sensitivity of a forest production model to variation in solar radiation data sets for the Eastern U.S. Climate Research 15:33-43

Aber, J.D. 2001. Reaching Scientific Consensus and Informing Public Policy. BioScience 51:699

Aber, J.D., S.V. Ollinger, C.T. Driscoll, G.E. Likens, R.T. Holmes, R.J. Freuder, and C.L. Goodale 2002. Inorganic N losses from a forested ecosystem in response to physical, chemical, biotic and climatic perturbations. Ecosystems 5:648-658

Aber, J.D., C.L. Goodale, S.V. Ollinger, M.-L. Smith, A.H. Magill, M.E. Martin, J.L. Stoddard. 2003. Is nitrogen altering the nitrogen status of northeastern forests? BioScience 53:375-390

Foster, D.R., F. Swanson, J. Aber, D. Tilman, N. Brockaw, I. Burke and A Knapp. 2003. The importance of land-use and its legacies to ecology and environmental management. BioScience 53:77-88

Goodale, C.L., J.D. Aber and P.M. Vitousek. 2003. An unexpected nitrate decline in New Hampshire streams. Ecosystems 6:75-86

Galloway, J.N., J.D. Aber, J.W. Erisman, S.P. Seitzinger, R.H. Howarth, E.B. Cowling and B.J. Cosby. 2003. The Nitrogen Cascade. Bioscience 53:341-356

Driscoll, C.T., D. Whitall, J. Aber, E. Boyer, M. Castro, C. Cronan, C. Goodale, P. Groffman, C. Hopkinson, K. Lambert, G. Lawrence and S. Ollinger. 2003. Nitrogen Pollution in the northeastern United States: Sources, effects and management options. BioScience 53:357-374

Venterea, R.T., P.M Groffman, L.V. Verchot, A.H. Magill, J.D. Aber and P.A. Steudler. 2003 Nitrogen oxide gas emissions from temperate forest soils receiving long-term nitrogen inputs. Global Change Biology 9:346-357

Education

Selected Service Activities

• U.S. National Assessment: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change Forest Sector - Co-Chair (1998-2001)
• Program Review Panel, Sustainable Forest Management Program, Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research, Sweden (May, 2000)
• Expert Team, Irish National Program for Determination of Critical Loads for Sulfur and Nitrogen and Critical Levels for Ozone in Ireland (1995-1998)
• National Research Council Committee on the Future of Biosphere Dynamics (2002-4)
• NSF-IGERT Site Review - University of Michigan Biological Research Station (2002)
• Reviewer - National Research Council Report - "Funding Smithsonian Research" (2002)
• National Research Council Comm. - A National Ecological Observation Network (2003)