Ecologist Develops New Method for Detecting Biodiversity
EMBARGOED until Feb. 1, 2009

BALTIMORE – Ecologists from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Baylor University in Texas have developed a new method for measuring the impact of human-caused environmental degradation on biodiversity that is significantly more precise than current methods and has revealed a dramatically lower ecological “tipping point” at which species are threatened.

The new method of statistical analysis was detailed online Feb. 1 in the British Ecological Society’s new journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution and includes a free download of a program to apply the analysis, created by co-author, and UMBC geography and environmental systems professor, Matthew Baker.

Environmental scientists are increasingly relying on statistical methods for determining thresholds, or “tipping points,” beyond which ecological systems are damaged by changes to the environment. More recently, ecologists have asked whether biological communities show similar responses – the proverbial “canary-in-the-coal-mine” test.

Accurately measuring these tipping points is important for protecting threatened species and better understanding how ecosystems respond to major changes such as global warming, coal mine leaching, agricultural pollutants or water-runoff from highly developed areas, said Baker, who with Ryan King, a biology professor from Baylor University, used stream invertebrate samples collected from Maryland tributaries by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and data from Florida’s Everglades in their analyses.

Baker said the precision of their new method is significantly greater than methods that have been widely used for the past 40 years.

For example, a decade-old analysis widely-cited by environmental professionals and policymakers suggests that it takes up to 10-15 percent of impervious surface (meaning roads, roofs, or parking lots) or about 20-30 percent developed land in a given area before local water-systems no longer sustain normal aquatic life. Baker and King’s new method demonstrates that aquatic life actually shows significant loss of biodiversity with only 1-3 percent developed land in a watershed.

A common practice by state and federal environmental protection agencies (U.S. EPA) is to rate the health of streams by comparing overall biotic life with data from “reference” streams using indices that combine various measures to provide a general scoring of health. This approach does a good job distinguishing highly degraded and relatively pristine systems, but isn’t as clear about what happens when conditions fall in between, Baker said.

“Our method of measuring response to degradation is more precise because we track the response of every species separately, and look specifically for places where the abundance or occurrence of many species changes simultaneously at a particular level of disturbance,” Baker said. “This allows us to detect, with a high level of statistical certainty, when we are approaching a point at which species are threatened, and whether the response is consistent with a community threshold.”

This article posted courtesy MarylandReporter.com – a nonprofit news organization that provides coverage of state government and politics.

By Len Lazarick
Len@MarylandReporter.com

The end to the three-year tuition freeze at state colleges and universities announced by Gov. Martin O’Malley last week was hardly a surprise.

Higher education has been a real growth area of state government in the last three years under O’Malley. It grew even under Gov. Robert Ehrlich, despit significant cuts to the university budgets, leading to tuition hikes that were politically damaging.

In the last three years, employment in state-run higher education has gone up by 2,800 people, or 7.8 percent, while only about 200 jobs were added to the rest of state government. That amounts to a measly .3 percent, according to the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report issued by the Comptroller’s Office last month. (Most of the jobs “cut” in the last three years have been vacant positions.)

The employment increase at four-year colleges and universities is just as dramatic going back six years. Since 2004, 4,588 jobs were added, a 13 percent hike that brought employment close to 39,000. In the rest of state government — the part that runs the roads, prisons, health care and social services — the state added 715 jobs in that time, a 1 percent increase to 62,558.

Enrollment at the colleges and universities was rising as well during the past six years, according to university system figures supplied to the Maryland Higher Education Commission.

Full-time undergraduate enrollment in the university system was up 13 percent to 75,500. Total overall enrollment, including graduate and part-time students, rose 15 percent to 148,676.

The rising enrollment would certainly seem to justify the rising employment, although the number of people being served by the non-education government departments was rising as well.

The tuition freeze at the universities has not curtailed salaries for the top faculty and administrators at these institutions.

As I reported in a story for the defunct Baltimore Examiner two years ago, three quarters of the state employees making six-figure salaries work at the universities, according to figures supplied by the Comptroller’s Office under a Public Information Act request.

(Joe Shapiro, communications director for Comptroller Peter Franchot gets a shout-out for the most rapid response to a PIA I’ve ever experienced. By e-mail, I got the Excel spreadsheet with the information I requested in just 10 minutes – mainly because the office had just supplied Alan Suderman at the Washington Examiner with same data. Suderman did a story a week ago.)

All told, 5,200 state employees make more than $100,000 per year in base pay, a figure 10 percent higher than two years ago. But 3,900 of those employees work at the four-year colleges and universities. That means that only 2 percent of the employees in general state government get six figures, while 10 percent at the universities do.

The salaries pulled down by university presidents, vice presidents and deans may be competitive in the elite world of academia. David Ramsay, retiring president at the University of Maryland Baltimore professional schools, earns $589,000, Dan Mote at the University of Maryland College Park makes $464,600, and Freeman Hrabowski at UMBC gets $420,000. The new dean at the journalism school at College Park, Kevin Klose, pulls down $260,000 — $40,000 more than his predecessor two years ago.

A new survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education shows Maryland salaries are in the middle of the pack, compared to other states, Childs Walker reports in Monday’s Baltimore Sun.

But the salaries certainly seem out of line compared to the cabinet secretaries with significant and important responsibilities. Public Safety Secretary Gary Maynard is given $162,000 to oversee 22,000 inmates in prison and 70,000 former inmates on parole and probation. Health Secretary John Colmers got the same amount heading an $8 billion department with wide-ranging duties for public health

Why do they make less than two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists at UMCP – Haynes Johnson and Gene Roberts – for teaching three or four classes, and bringing their prestige to the institution? Johnson made $165,000 and Roberts $163,000.

Life is unfair, and so is the pay structure for well-compensated state employees.

Original reports on the allegations of assault and sexual assault against former UMBC professor Ramachandra Hosmane can be found here and here. The charges against Hosmane were nolle prossed (dismissed) last week in district court in Catonsville.

Since that time, we’ve received tips, including a comment on one of the previous posts, that the charges against Hosmane were dropped as some sort of deal with his accuser. The tipindicates that some sort of financial settlement deal between Hosmane and his accuser was made. Presumably this meant a civil or private settlement of some sort in which the accuser agreed not to testify in court – which would result in the charges being thrown out. The tipsters also indicated that Hosmane had retired from UMBC as of January 1, 2010. The commenter indicated that a UMBC investigation corroborated what the accuser had alleged.

In doing further research, we discovered that Hosmane is no longer listed on the faculty page for the Chemistry Department at UMBC and the Hosmane Research Group is missing from the list of research groups. We also sent email to the office of his attorney, Arthur M. Frank, asking for comment last week on the charges being dismissed and again today regarding the latest tips we received. Additionally, we made similar requests of the attorney for the accuser and received no responses.

I did receive confirmation from Eleanor Lewis at UMBC that Hosmane has indeed retired from the University.

Anyone with further information on this story is welcome to send email to mail@insidecharmcity.com. We welcome comments from Dr. Hosmane, Mr. Frank, Hosmane’s accuser, her attorney, and anyone else with information confirming or refuting the previous information relayed to us.

To sum things up, Ramachandra Hosmane is retired from UMBC. This reportedly happened January 1 and then charges were dismissed against him January 6. We received information that indicated Hosmane reached some sort of financial agreement with his accuser in which she agreed not to testify against him. We are still seeking additional confirmation on the details of any settlement and his retirement.

Update: The Retriever Weekly’s blog picks up the story about the retirement and the charges being nolle prossed.

Reused from MarylandReporter.com with permission.

WBAL TV

The Naval Academy announced their 2010 football schedule on Thursday, which includes five games at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium and three neutral site games in NFL venues. The Mids will play four teams who played in a bowl in 2009, including two conference champions. The Mids are coming off a 10-4 campaign, including a seventh-consecutive Commander-In-Chief’s Trophy and a victory over Missouri in the Texas Bowl.

Navy will kick off the 2010 campaign on Sept. 4 against Maryland at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore.