Peter B. Reich (New York, United States; 1953) began his scientific career with a BA in Physics and Creative Writing at Goddard College (Vermont, United States), continuing with an MS in Forest Ecology at the University of Missouri and, in 1983, a PhD in Environmental Biology and Plant Ecology at Cornell University. From 1985 to 1991, he was assistant professor then associate professor in the Department of Forestry at the University of Wisconsin. He subsequently completed visiting fellowships at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia (1998-1999) and the Universidad Nacional de Comahue, Bariloche, Argentina (2005).
From 2011 to 2013, he was Foundation Director at Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at the University of Western Sydney, Australia, where he continues to hold the position of Chief Scientist. He is currently on the faculty at the University of Minnesota, where he has been F. B. Hubachek, Sr. Chair since 1991, Distinguished McKnight University Professor since 2003, Regents Professor since 2007 and, since 2009, a Resident Fellow.
A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2011, his numerous awards include the Presidential Young Investigator Award of the U.S. National Science Foundation (1988-1993), the National Academy of Science Scientific Exchange Award (1991) and the Pound Award for Excellence in Research from the University of Wisconsin (1989).
He has almost 500 refereed articles to his name and ranks among the ten most highly cited ecologists and environmental scientists.
Speech
Ecology and Conservation Biology, 2nd edition
“It will be more crucial to human society to better understand our interactions with nature on Earth than with outer space, yet we still spend more money studying space than nature,” says a concerned Peter Reich. Behind his protest is the stark fact that we still do not know how our planet functions, partly because of what we don’t know about the function of plants. Reich, plant ecologist and Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota (United States), is aware that the planet and its green inhabitants share an intimate though enigmatic relationship.
Plants absorb CO2 and turn it into organic matter, which is then taken up by other living beings as part of a relational web extending to the Earth itself – hence the changes taking place in the make-up of our atmosphere. However, we still cannot say with any degree of certainty how much CO2 a forest can absorb, or how ecosystems will react to a shifting climate. Reich has found a key that reveals the connections in this network, and it all starts with a simple leaf.
In effect, by studying leaves it is possible to predict the evolution of an entire ecosystem, be it Mediterranean woodland or tropical rainforest. The discovery that so little can yield so much is revolutionizing fields of study from plant physiology to global nutrient cycles and, even, the future impacts of climate change. Reich has a uniquely important place in the science of leaves, which has now been recognized by the 2009 Frontiers Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology.
What led him to his discovery? Though vocal on the unequal share-out of research funds between Earth and space, Reich’s scientific interests were initially cosmic in orientation: “I felt an innate curiosity about the nature of being and of the universe: How did life ever evolve? How did the universe get here and where are its boundaries? What happens to us, if anything, when we die? A blend of astrophysics, ecology, philosophy and spirituality.” Of all the challenges before him, he opted for the complexity of life on Earth, “just as important and probably with more immediate impact,” he explains. Even now, he still aspires to “find out how nature ‘operates’ and how to better manage our interaction with it.”
This mission has taken him round most of the planet, including New Zealand and Australia, investigating in “boreal, temperate and tropical forests, savannas, grasslands and agricultural systems.” He has (or admits to) no ecosystem favorites: “One thing I have learned about myself is that if I am open to ‘seeing’, then every ecosystem is endlessly beautiful and interesting.”
His student years were spent in the School of Forestry, Fisheries and Wildlife at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and later Cornell University. After serving as Associate Professor in the Department of Forestry at the University of Wisconsin from 1985 to 1991, he took up the F.B. Hubachek Chair in the Department of Forest Resources of the University of Minnesota, a position which he still holds. From the start of his career, he realized that the innate characteristics of each plant (and their leaves) could tell us about “things as diverse as how sensitive they were to ozone pollution and what kinds of ecological conditions they would be most successful in.” The question then was how far this approach could be taken; what could be known about a species from, for instance, its leaves?
Reich’s work shows that it is possible to link ecosystem events at the smallest scales with global processes, up to and including the atmosphere, embracing different levels of complexity from the seedling to the tree, from the cell to the ecosystem and from the stand to the biosphere.
There are some 250,000 kinds of plants in the world, with about as many kinds of leaves; however in 1997 Reich and his team realized that these differences concealed certain fundamental features held in common. One is that each square centimeter of leaf will process a similar quantity of carbon throughout its life. In consequence, harder, narrower leaves will tend to compensate their smaller “processing” surface by living longer. This rule has implications for the whole ecosystem: trees with leaves that photosynthesize rapidly need a lot of light, and therefore have a broader, flatter canopy than conifers, for instance, and cast more shade. And this, in turn, affects ground-dwelling life. Similarly, larger and “juicier” fallen leaves will decompose more quickly, speeding up the nutrient cycle in the ecosystem.
In the last decade, Reich and his group have continued gathering data from hundred of thousands of leaves of almost 2,600 species, originating in 175 ecosystems from the Arctic tundra to the Amazon jungle. The leaves of each species are catalogued according to their tissue thickness and density, phosphorous and nitrogen content, average life, and photosynthesis and respiration rates. And all this information has served to construct a predictive model for ecosystem behavior which marks a major advance in our ability to foresee how each will react to processes like climate change.
But data of this kind are so critical that their collection cannot be left to just one approach. Hence Reich’s leadership of the BioCON project set up during 1997 at the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve in Minnesota. One of the rare long-term studies to be conducted in open grassland, its goal is to explore ways in which plant communities will respond to changing atmospheric conditions. BioCON researchers, moreover, are not only considering increased CO2, but also nitrogen pollution and declining biodiversity.
Reich himself has devised pioneering experiments that have shown just how severely biodiversity losses impact the surviving species. “Thanks to these experiments we are better able to predict not only what kind of forests we will have in future, but whether we will have them in a given area and how they will respond in terms of their productivity, nutrient cycle and state of health.”
All this work has made Reich one of the ten most frequently cited environmental scientists worldwide. So what chances does he see for forests to survive the rapid climate change that is now gathering? “Although the capacity of humans to act against our own interests is pretty astounding, I must maintain a sense of possibilities. In other words, while the future for the environment is in all senses highly uncertain and very much threatened, one can only hope by continuing to teach society that maybe one day we will act in ways that are both good for us and good for the environment.”
