Forum Network

Since completing the Natural Resources graduate program at UNH in 1994, Mary Martin has continued working at the Complex Systems Research Center as a research assistant professor. Martin's work has focused primarily on the use of hyperspectral remote sensing data for the determination of forest productivity, nutrient cycling and species classification. This work has utilized data from NASA's Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) which has been flown extensively over a number of sites in the northeastern US. This work is a multi-investigator effort involving UNH faculty/staff and researchers from the US Forest Service Norteastern Station in Durham. Extensive field data collections, GIS data, remote sensing imagery, and ecosystem modeling are combined in this effort to scale relationships derived from intensive plot level sampling to the full extent of our image data.

Dr. Smith is a USDA Forest Service research scientist working cooperatively with the CSRC Forest Ecosystems Group on the MAPBGC project and various field research projects. She is the lead investigator on the NACP Landscape level field measurement campaign

With an undergraduate training in traditional geology, Scott Bailey's graduate work turned to hydrology and biogeochemistry. He is broadly interested in the influence of substrate, including soils, geologic parent-materials, landforms, and water, on the structure and function of ecosystems. Specific areas of current focus include evaluation of watershed mass balance studies and retrospective soil monitoring to determine temporal dynamics of forest soil base cation supply, the role of secondary minerals as nutrient reservoirs in forest soils, site factors responsible for nutritional stress in sugar maple, and the role of seepage and fractured-rock groundwater discharge in nutrient cycling and biodiversity. Current projects range in location from the Allegheny Plateau in Pennsylvania to the Chic-Choc Mountains in Quebec, with a special emphasis on the Hubbard Brook, Cone Pond, and Sleepers River Research Watersheds.

Helen E. Lee earned a BA at 1981 Harvard University in 1981 and a JD at Harvard Law School in 1985. She focuses in Writing and humanistic studies. Helen joined the MIT faculty in 1997. Lee is a highly regarded author whose general subject, the lives and families of African-Americans, has come vividly to life in two well-received novels, *The Serpent's Gift (1994)* and *Water Marked (1999)*. An inspired teacher and mentor at MIT, Lee has also served as fiction editor of "Callaloo," a major literary journal, and as a volunteer writing teacher in Boston-area correctional facilities.

B.S., Forest Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1984. M.S., Forestry, University of New Hampshire, 1991. Ph.D., Natural Resources, University of New Hampshire, 1996. Research Interests: 1. Develop the capability to map forest canopy level cation concentrations using emerging remote sensing technology. 2. Use maps developed in (1) to parameterize ecosystem models, assist with national forest land management planning, and assess ecosystem health at the landscape scale. 3. Understand how the biogeochemical status of a given site may affect sugar maple health. Current Research: 1. Extensive Databases and High Resolution Remote Sensing as Drivers for Models of Ecosystem Function: A Case Study of the White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire. 2. Assessing the effects of historical land use on forest productivity and response to climate change and CO2: A remote sensing, field, and modeling analysis of the White Mountain National Forest. 3. Foliar chemistry as an indicator of forest ecosystem status, primary production and stream water chemistry. 4. Regional Sugar Maple Study.

Richard Smith is an independent historian. For more than a decade he has been “becoming” Thoreau: dressing up in meticulous 19th-century regalia, reading his essays in front of crowds, fielding questions (in the first person) from the public, about the man’s personal life and politics.

Randall Kenan, writer, biographer of James Baldwin, and author of *The Fire This Time* (2007), looks at the life of Baldwin in the context of today -- where we are with civil rights, religion and impoverished African Americans.

A first generation descendant of Portuguese immigrants from the Alto Alentejo region of Portugal, Ana Patuleia Ortins grew up with the ethnic lore and traditions attached to the food of her ancestors. She holds a degree in culinary arts and teaches Portuguese cooking in her own kitchen and at local colleges.

Barbara Haber is the author of *From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals*. Praise for the book came from *Julia Child*, *Gourmet Magazine*, and other food notables as well as academic historians, and a chapter appeared in Best Food Writing 2002. Haber has also written on food topics for *Harvard Magazine*, *Yankee Magazine*, the *Los Angeles Times*, the *Dictionary of American History*, *Notable American Women* and many other popular and professional publications, including *Through the Kitchen Window: Women Explore the Intimate Meanings of Food and Cooking* and *From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies*, which she co-edited with Arlene Avakian. Barbara Haber currently serves on the awards board of the James Beard Foundation where she initiated and serves as curator for Beard on Books, a speaker series featuring notable food writers and cookbook authors.

Lewis H. Lapham is a national correspondent for *Harper's Magazine*. He is also the editor of *Lapham's Quarterly*, a journal of history which debuted spring of 2007. Mr. Lapham is the author of numerous books, including* Waiting for the Barbarians, Theater of War, Gag Rule,* and *Pretensions to Empire*. *The New York Times* has likened him to H.L. Mencken; *Vanity Fair *has suggested a strong resemblance to Mark Twain, and Tom Wolfe compared him to Montaigne. Mr. Lapham currently writes *Notebook*, a bi-monthly essay for *Harper's* that won a National Magazine Award in 1995 for exhibiting an exhilarating point of view in an age of conformity. He has also written for *Life, Commentary, the National Review, the Yale Literary Magazine, Elle, Fortune, Forbes, the American Spectator, Vanity Fair, Travel and Leisure, Golf, Golf Digest, Parade, Channels, Maclean's, the London Observer, the New York Times*, and *the Wall Street Journal*. Lewis H. Lapham was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame in February of 2007. A native of San Francisco, Mr. Lapham has studied history at Yale College and Cambridge University.