Two plant biologists with exceptional track records have been honoured by national organizations for guiding the next generation of researchers to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the function and diversity of plants.
Both scientists are faculty members with the Department of Renewable Resources in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences.
Uwe Hacke, a globally respected authority in how water and nutrients are transported in trees, received the David J. Gifford Award in Tree Biology from the Canadian Association of Plant Biologists in early July. The award recognizes those who have made outstanding contributions in tree biology.
Over the past two decades, Hacke has done pioneering work on understanding how the vascular tissues of woody plants work. Water and sugars are often transported over long distances in these potentially tall and long-lived plants, but transport is susceptible to blockage due to drought and freeze-thaw cycles.
Hacke has explored how plants optimize transport in the face of challenging and changing environmental conditions.
"Such work may inform the next generation of researchers in their quest to find forest trees and agricultural crops that use water efficiently," said Hacke.
René Belland is an expert on the distribution and diversity of mosses and liverworts (known collectively as bryophytes). He received the Magister Teaching Award from the Canadian Botanical Association for his consistently high level of teaching excellence.
Since bryophytes are very small and notoriously difficult to identify, they are under-studied and often ignored, despite being important in combatting soil erosion, maintaining soil moisture and recycling nutrients in forest vegetation. Belland created an undergraduate course in their identification that is so engaging and famously energetic that it is consistently fully subscribed within an hour of when registration opens.
Students who take the course are in the land reclamation or conservation biology programs and they put their identification knowledge into practice when they find jobs conducting plant surveys, said Belland.
"An improved understanding of mosses and/or plant identification helps us better understand the complex relationships of plant diversity with environmental and human-caused factors on the landscape, and helps us manage our natural heritage," he said. "If you can't name species then you don't know what you are working with."
As the instructor of a fourth-year course on conservation and management of endangered species, Belland also brings to bear his experience as a member of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, asking them to prepare both a status report and a recovery plan for an endangered species.
"It's this type of exercise that allows students to place their academic studies in a real-world context; through it they develop skills in scientific research, report writing, critical thinking and persuasive argument," said Ellen Macdonald, chair of the Department of Renewable Resources.