Appalachian Lab Monthly Newsletter
Last October, the Appalachian Lab Investors Network (TALIN) generously provided funding to support several research projects at AL. One of the projects selected for funding that you may have been hearing about came from Emily Cohen and the Animal Migration Research Group. The project, titled “A compact mobile radar system for quantifying the movement of birds, bats, and insects”, was to acquire a novel mobile radar, which will enable transformative discoveries in the emerging international field of Aeroecology. As only the second such radar in North America, this instrument will provide an immediate and novel benefit to the conservation and management of birds, bats and insects in the airspace in Maryland, Appalachia, and beyond.
The BirdScan MR2 compact mobile radar was recently developed to quantify the movement of animals through the airspace at high resolution. These radars are unique in their ability to distinguish bats, insects, and different groups of birds (i.e., waders, passerines, and swifts) based on their wing-beat patterns, record flight directions and flight speeds, and measure height distributions in relation to atmospheric conditions. The MR2 model is newly released in 2024 with capabilities to detect small birds up to an altitude of 1,000 m in real-time with a spatial resolution of 1.5 m. It is small and relatively light with limited power needs, making it ideal for field sampling from the bed of a truck, and has a user-friendly interface designed collaboratively with ecologists at the Swiss Ornithological Institute.
We had some setbacks with the matching funding so we do not have the radar yet. However, it is in the process of being built and is expected to arrive this winter, just in time to start using it next spring migration. Stay tuned!
New AL Faces
Miriam Johnston, Assistant Professor
Dr. Miriam Johnston is a global change ecologist who studies how disturbance and climatic stress affect plant demography and ecosystem fluxes of carbon, water, and energy. She applies methods such as mechanistic and statistical modeling to discover patterns in “big data,” with the ultimate goal of supporting ecosystem conservation and management. She has particular interest in the effects of drought and heat and in applications of thermal remote sensing.
Miriam is delighted to re-join AL as faculty, having earned her master’s degree at UMCES in 2014, taken a winding road through academia and across the country, and found her way back! Outside of research, Miriam enjoys cycling, potlucking, and hiking with her over-enthusiastic border terrier. Newly, she spends most of her free time studying simian development at close quarters.
Recent Achievements/Successes/News
WBAL TV Appearance
Emily Cohen and Brian Tsuru recently appeared on WBAL TV’s noon news broadcast to talk about bird migration.
Click here to watch the segment.
Frostburg Halloween Parade
ARC Conference
In early October, Dave participated in the Appalachian Regional Commission’s Conference, co-hosted by the state of Maryland and held at FSU. The theme was Appalachian Places: Growing Local Economies.
Campus Safety Assessment
UMCES is currently undergoing an internal assessment. Safety Advisors for Educational Campuses (SAFE) has been contracted to review UMCES’ policies and procedures related to campus safety. It shouldn’t directly affect most members of our community, but we wanted to make you aware of the process. We hope to come away with advice to make our campus community as safe and secure as possible. They will be conducting a campus visit on November 3rd. Please reach out to Heather if you have any questions.
DEI Update
Why DEI?
The AL DEI group wants to raise awareness of what DEI is and why it’s relevant to you. This semester’s theme is “Why DEI?”.
This month, we want to highlight institutional responsibility.
We have state university, funding, and lab mandates to provide education and research that serves the public, and to increase the diversity of our workforce so that it reflects the communities that we serve. As members of these institutions, we have a responsibility to carry forward their commitments to DEI.
Next month, we’ll highlight the theory and research that support these mandates. Hint: diverse teams are often more productive and do better science!
Questions, comments, concerns?
Fill out our anonymous feedback form: https://tinyurl.com/4f7cjwwr
Spotlight on Safety - National Fire Prevention Week
Earlier this month was the National Fire Protection Association’s annual Fire Prevention week and the 2025 theme was “Charge into Fire Safety: Lithium-Ion Batteries in Your Home“. It attempted to shine a spotlight on a danger hiding in plain sight: lithium-ion batteries.
Why this focus? Because these batteries power nearly everything in our homes and in the workplace, including smartphones, laptops, power tools, e-bikes, cordless vacuums, toys. When misused or damaged, they pose a real fire risk. In March earlier this year, a Southwest flight was evacuated at Reno after a passenger’s laptop battery caught fire during deplaning. All 117 passengers evacuated safely; one passenger was treated for burns. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a handheld radio’s lithium-ion battery went into thermal runaway on a docked oil tanker, causing a fire with about $3 million in damages. One of our own campuses, HPL, experienced a fire in the fall of 2022 due to a lithium-ion battery charging incident. A battery used to power an underwater drone was left charging unattended over a weekend. The activation of their sprinkler system probably saved their AREL building.
Stories like this drive home that fires from lithium-ion batteries can happen in places from everyday to highly regulated environments.
What can go wrong?
- Thermal runaway: a damaged, overheated, or overcharged cell can enter a self-reinforcing heating cycle, triggering fire, smoke, or even explosion.
- Smoke & toxic gases: fires involving lithium-ion batteries often emit corrosive or toxic gases, making them more hazardous to extinguish.
- Reignition risk: even after a fire seems out, a battery cell can reignite hours or days later if parts remain heated or damaged.
- External triggers: physical damage, manufacturing defects, overcharging, overheating, or shot circuits can all initiate failure.
- Improper disposal: tossing batteries and devices in regular trash or recycling bins can lead to fires in waste facilities or collection trucks.
To reduce your risk, follow this three-step mantra:
1. Buy
2. Charge
3. Recycle/Dispose Safely
Also consider the following practices:
- Store spare batteries in a cool, dry place.
- Inspect for swelling, leakage, or odd smells. If a battery shows signs of distress, stop using it immediately.
- Place a smoke detector near charging areas.
- Educate children and others in your home about good battery habits.
How to recycle household lithium-ion batteries:
What is it about Lithium-Ion Batteries that Makes Them So Hazardous?
The following video explains more about the history of Lithium-Ion batteries and why they pose such hazards:
Administrative Reminders - Submitting Leave Requests in Workday
We want to remind everyone that you should be submitting your requests for leave in Workday. If you are a supervisor, you should be logging in to Workday regularly to respond to employee leave requests.
As a refresher, here’s a summary of the absence request process in Workday:
1. Login to Workday with your UMD credentials and complete the 2FA.
2. In the search bar, search for: Request Absence
3. Select the day or days using the calendar view and click the Continue button:
4. Select the type of absence:
Please note that you should always select Paid Time Offs unless you have been specifically instructed otherwise by HR.
5. Select the most appropriate type of Paid Time Offs from the choices depending on the type of leave you are opting to use:
6. You will then be prompted to select a reason for your absence that corresponds to the type of leave you selected. If you are not taking a full day, adjust the Hours accordingly. Reason options for Annual Time Off (aka Annual Leave) are shown below:
7. Click the Submit Request button.
Your supervisor will receive a notification about your leave request and will approve or deny it. This will automatically adjust your leave balance.
If you’re a supervisor, don’t forget to login to Workday regularly to address outstanding leave requests. If you have any questions you can reach out to Heather.
New Publications
Cecilia Nilsson, Judy Shamoun-Baranes, Dara A. Satterfield, Sissel Sjöberg, Emily B. Cohen. 2025. Animal niches in the airspace. Trends in Ecology and Evolution.
Mark Your Calendars
- MEES Colloquium: Oct. 24-25 at AL/FSU
- Tom Horton visit: Nov. 5-6
- Watershed Moment Community Learning Event: Nov. 6 at 6:30 PM at AL
- Town Hall: November 7 at 11:00 AM
- TGIF: November 7 at 3:30 PM
- Seminar from Javier Lloret (UMCES-HPL): Nov. 14 at 11:00 AM
- Visit from Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm and Clarissa Mathews: Nov. 17
- Seminar from Justine Whitaker (UMES): Nov. 21 at 11:00 AM
- Seminar from Ashley Dayer (Virginia Tech): Dec. 5 at 11:00 AM
Do you have an announcement or update you’d like to include in a future newsletter?
AL’s monthly newsletter is issued following the monthly town hall meeting. Please submit any announcements and updates to Katie Kline or Heather Johnson before the close of business on the first Friday of each month to ensure that your content can be included in that month’s newsletter.
