OU SHAED FUTUE:

ESEACH HIGHLIGHTS

JANUAY2023

The following stories highlight Smithsonian research that has helped to shape and champion our 

strategic pan-Institutional initiatives, including Life on a Sustainable Planet and Solving the 

Mysteries of the Universe. These highlights also show the collaborative nature of the 

Institution’s research, not only across Smithsonian units but in connection with leading 

universities and national and international research organizations aimed at mitigating the 

impacts of climate change and other types of human impacts on nature.
OUR SHARED FUTURE: LIFE ON A SUSTAINABLE PLANET

The Smithsonian announced the launch of its “Life on a Sustainable Planet” initiative in November 2022 at 

COP27, the annual meeting of the Conference of Parties (“COP”) held in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt. This is the 

Smithsonian’s latest major effort to collect new data about the changing planet, implement holistic and multiscale approaches to environmental conservation, and educate the world about why and how sustainable 

solutions to climate change can benefit people and nature.

Through Life on a Sustainable Planet, the Smithsonian aims to promote evidence-based decision-making, 

working in concert with local communities, to address the climate crisis. Life on a Sustainable Planet will use 

the Institution’s 176-year history of scientific research and data gathering across a global network of research 

centers, its expansive museum collection and its diverse set of exhibits and educational programs to produce, 

curate and communicate strategies for adapting to and mitigating the impacts of climate change to the public. 

The Institution will pioneer new technologies to collect environmental data, develop new platforms to analyze 

and share these data and work with partners and communities to inform conservation action.

“Climate change threatens our livelihood. The Smithsonian is hopeful that, with the right approach, the world 

can adapt to and mitigate this crisis,” said Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch. “With Life on a Sustainable 

Planet, the Smithsonian hopes to set an example for the world on how to address this crisis effectively and 

equitably for all.”

“For more than 175 years, the Smithsonian has been building collections and undertaking research that shows 

how humans have pushed Earth’s delicate ecosystems towards a tipping point that threatens our long-term 

health, national security, and economic stability,” said Ellen Stofan, Under Secretary for Science and Research 

at the Smithsonian. “In response, we are working in the space where nature and human communities 

intersect, developing solutions that will make Earth more sustainable for all that live here.”

The launch of Life on a Sustainable Planet included a new website, science.si.edu, and a short video. 
SERC PARTNERS ON GALAPAGOS NON-NATIVE MARINE INVASIVE SPECIES ONLINE DATABASE

The Marine Invasions Research Laboratory of 

the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (“SERC”) 

and the Charles Darwin Foundation (“CDF”) of the Galápagos, 

Ecuador announced in December the launch of the Galápagos 

Non-native Estuarine and Marine Organisms database portal 

(GalNEMO).

Though long treasured as a refuge for biodiversity—and its 

critical role in Darwin's theory of evolution—the Galápagos is 

not immune to invasion. In fact, more than 50 nonnative 

species have already found their way to the Galápagos 

Islands, SERC and CDF reported in 2019—more than 10 times 

the number scientists previously thought.

GalNEMO creates a baseline of introduced marine species in the Galápagos Marine Reserve (“GMR”) by 

synthesizing ongoing field research conducted by CDF and SERC scientists in the Galápagos with extensive 

literature review, and then documenting the results as part of an online, searchable database available to the 

public. This online platform will facilitate the exchange of information between researchers, decisionmakers, 

and other stakeholders involved in conservation, management, and public policy aimed to develop effective 

strategies for the conservation of the biodiversity of the Galápagos.

The GalNEMO portal is built upon the NEMESIS template, the Marine Invasions Research Laboratory’s National 

Estuarine and Marine Exotic Species Information System, which documents non-native marine and estuarine 

invertebrates and algae introduced in the United States. Starting in 2015, SERC scientists traveled to the 

Galápagos to conduct standardized fouling surveys of local marine organisms alongside Inti Keith, principal 

investigator of CDF’s Marine Invasive Species Program, and her team. These surveys allow scientists to 

establish a baseline look of the marine fouling community’s diversity and structure, as well as monitor for nonnative introductions that could arrive to this fragile ecosystem via the hulls of ships, ballast water, or other 

anthropogenic means. As the GMR is one of the Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the world, a UNESCO World 

Heritage Site, and rich in habitat and biodiversity with some species endemic only to these islands, monitoring 

nonnative species populations for changes and detecting newcomers is an important aspect of Galápagos 

conservation efforts.

Founded in 1959, the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galápagos Islands is an international non-profit 

organization dedicated to scientific research for the conservation of the environment and biodiversity of the 

Galapagos archipelago. The Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands and the Smithsonian 

Environmental Research Center established a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) in 2018 to conduct

collaborative research to understand and sustain coastal marine ecosystems.

Introduced Blue Crab Cardisoma crassum in 

mangroves on Santiago Island, Galapagos. 

Photo: Inti Keith, CDF
FOSSIL CSI: ANALYSIS OF MARINE REPTILE GRAVEYARD SUGGESTS BIRTHING GROUNDS SITE

Today’s marine giants—such as blue and humpback whales—routinely make massive migrations across the 

ocean to breed and give birth in waters where predators are scarce, with many congregating year after year 

along the same stretches of coastline. Now, new research from a team of scientists suggests that nearly 200 

million years before giant whales evolved, school bus-sized marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs may have been 

making similar migrations to breed and give birth together in relative safety.

The findings published in the journal Current Biology, examine a rich fossil bed in the renowned BerlinIchthyosaur State Park (“BISP”) in Nevada’s Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, where many 50-foot-long 

ichthyosaurs (Shonisaurus popularis) lay petrified in stone. Led by Neil Kelley, Vanderbilt University scientist 

and former Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History Peter Buck postdoctoral fellow, and coauthored by the museum’s curator of fossil marine mammals Nicholas Pyenson, the study offers a plausible 

explanation as to how at least 37 of these marine reptiles came to meet their ends in the same locality—a 

question that has vexed paleontologists for more than half a century.

“We present evidence that these ichthyosaurs died here in large numbers because they were migrating to this 

area to give birth for many generations across hundreds of thousands of years,” Pyenson said. “That means 

this type of behavior we observe today in whales has been around for more than 200 million years.”

Over the years, some paleontologists have proposed that BISP’s ichthyosaurs—predators resembling oversized 

chunky dolphins that have been adopted as Nevada’s state fossil—died in a mass stranding event such as 

those that sometimes afflicts modern whales or that toxins from a nearby harmful algal bloom poisoned the 

creatures. The problem is that these hypotheses lack strong lines of scientific evidence to support them.

To try to solve this prehistoric mystery, the team combined newer paleontological techniques such as 3D 

scanning and geochemistry with traditional paleontological perseverance by poring over archival materials, 

photographs, maps, field notes, and drawer after drawer of museum collections for shreds of evidence that 

could be reanalyzed.

To do this, Kelley, Pyenson and the research team collaborated with Jon Blundell, a member of the 

Smithsonian Digitization Program Office’s 3D Program team, and Holly Little, a long-time collaborator with 

Pyenson and the 3D Program’s team and currently the informatics manager in the museum’s Department of 

Paleobiology. While Pyenson and Kelley were physically measuring bones and studying the site using 

traditional paleontological techniques, Little and Blundell used digital cameras and a spherical laser scanner to 

take hundreds of photographs and millions of point measurements that were then stitched together using 

specialized software to create a 3D model of the fossil bed.

The research team found a key piece of the puzzle when they discovered tiny ichthyosaur remains among new 

fossils collected at BISP and hiding within older museum collections. Careful comparison of the bones and 

teeth using micro-CT X-ray scans at Vanderbilt University revealed that these small bones were in fact 

embryonic and newborn Shonisaurus.

“Once it became clear that there was nothing for them to eat here, and there were large adult Shonisaurus

along with embryos and newborns but no juveniles, we started to seriously consider whether this might have 

been a birthing ground,” Kelley said.
Further analysis of the various strata in which the different clusters of ichthyosaur bones were found also 

revealed that the ages of the many fossil beds of BISP were separated by at least hundreds of thousands of 

years, if not millions.

“Finding these different spots with the same species spread across geologic time with the same demographic 

pattern tells us that this was a preferred habitat that these large oceangoing predators returned to for 

generations,” Pyenson said. “This is a clear ecological signal, we argue, that this was a place that Shonisaurus

used to give birth, very similar to today’s whales. Now we have evidence that this sort of behavior is 230 

million years old.”

The 3D scans of the site are now available for other researchers to study and for the public to explore via the 

open-source Smithsonian’s Voyager platform, which is developed and maintained by Blundell’s team members 

at the Digitization Program Office. An interactive digital experience about the research team’s study, including 

a 3D model of ichthyosaur sites analyzed, is also available on the Digitization Program Office’s website.

“Our work is public,” Blundell said. “We aren’t just scanning sites and objects and locking them up. We create 

these scans to open up the collection to other researchers and members of the public who can’t physically get 

to the Smithsonian.”

This research was conducted under research permits issued by the U.S. Forest Service and Nevada State Parks. 

It was supported by funding from the Smithsonian; University of Nevada, Reno; Vanderbilt University; and the 

University of Utah.
TEMPO: TRACKING AIR POLLUTION TO SUPPORT A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE FOR ALL

Weather satellites make it easy to track weather 

patterns across North America, but the same 

cannot be said about tracking air pollution. While 

our phones can tell us when it’s going to stop 

raining to the minute, we do not have the same 

ability to measure and predict the movement of 

pollutants in the air as precisely. Air pollution 

comes from many sources, including wildfires, 

automobiles, and manufacturing plants. These

emissions can spread across thousands of miles to 

threaten the health and well-being of entire

ecosystems and communities. Fortunately, this 

coming spring, the Center for Astrophysics |

Harvard & Smithsonian is launching the 

Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution 

(“TEMPO”) instrument into geostationary orbit to 

allow scientists to track air pollution in near-real 

time to help us understand its causes and how it is 

impacting life on Earth so we can develop 

sustainable solutions for the future.

TEMPO will collect high-resolution information about air pollution across North America on an hour-by-hour 

basis, during daylight hours, enabling researchers to study where air pollution comes from, how it moves 

through our atmosphere, and the ways it affects our forests, oceans, and communities. Just like the weather, 

air pollution varies throughout the day and moves quickly, and by training TEMPO over North America, our 

scientists will be able to keep a close eye on how pollution fluctuates by the hour.

TEMPO will be the first space-based instrument that is capable of measuring North American air quality hourly 

in geographic segments as small as four square miles, or about the size of midtown Manhattan. The TEMPO 

instrument measures sunlight reflected from Earth’s surface through the atmosphere. It is able to identify 

specific pollutants because each molecule creates a unique signature in the measured light. It will scan an area 

ranging from the Pacific to the Atlantic and from the Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mexico to the Alberta oil 

sands in northern Canada, encompassing most of the populated area of North America. It will enable us to 

analyze most types of pollutants, as well as other atmospheric threats, and their effects on our ecosystems 

and our lives. 

TEMPO will launch into geostationary orbit 22,236 miles above 

Earth’s equator in 2023 as a payload on Intelstat 40e. © Maxar 

Technologies.
STUDY DETAILS HOW ANIMALS ARE KEY TO RESTORING THE WORLD’S FORESTS

The world faces a climate crisis paired with a record loss of biodiversity in every ecosystem. Increasingly, 

attention turns to forest restoration as a solution to these twin calamities. Forests soak up atmospheric 

carbon dioxide and provide habitats for organisms. Scientists interested in helping forests bounce back from 

deforestation typically focus on one thing—planting trees. But a new study at the Smithsonian Tropical 

Research Institute (“STRI”) underscores a powerful, yet largely overlooked, driver of forest recovery: the 

animals.

Led by an international team from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, STRI, the Yale School of the 

Environment and the New York Botanical Garden examined a series of regenerating forests in central Panama 

20 to 100 years after they were abandoned. Their unique, long-term data set revealed that by carrying a wide 

variety of seeds into deforested areas, animals are key to the recovery of tree species’ richness and abundance 

to old-growth levels after only 40–70 years of regrowth. The article, published in Philosophical Transactions of 

the Royal Society B, is part of an issue focused on forest landscape restoration as part of the UN Decade on 

Ecosystem Restoration.

An aerial view of regenerating secondary tropical forests in the Barro Colorado Nature Monument, Panama. Credit: Cristian 

Ziegler, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
“Animals are our greatest allies in reforestation,” said Daisy Dent, tropical ecologist from the Max Planck 

Institute of Animal Behavior, research associate at STRI and the study’s senior author. “Our study prompts a 

rethink of reforestation efforts to be about more than just establishing plant communities.”

The report also notes that situating regenerating forests near patches of old growth and reducing hunting 

encourage animals to colonize and establish.

“We show that considering the wider ecosystem, as well as features of the landscape, improves restoration 

efforts,” said Sergio Estrada-Villegas, a biologist now at Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia, and the 

study’s first author.

Animals that eat fruit and drop their seeds elsewhere are key to forest expansion. In the tropics, over 80% of 

tree species can be dispersed by animals. Despite this, forest restoration efforts continue to focus on 

increasing tree cover rather than reestablishing the animal-plant interactions that underpin ecosystem 

function. 

“Figuring out how animals contribute to reforestation is prohibitively hard because you need detailed 

information about which animals eat which plants,” Estrada-Villegas said.

Data collected from the forest at Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal offers a unique solution to this 

problem. In one of the best-studied tropical forests in the world, generations of scientists have documented 

plant-animal interactions to understand which groups of animals disperse which tree species.

In the current study, the team led by Estrada-Villegas and Dent examined this unique long-term dataset to 

determine the proportion of plants dispersed by four groups of animals—flightless mammals, large birds, 

small birds and bats—and how this proportion changed over a century of natural restoration. Their results 

offer the most detailed data of animal seed dispersal recovery across the longest timeframe of natural 

restoration.

“Most studies examine the first 30 years of succession, but our data spanning 100 years gives us a rare glimpse 

into what happens in the late phase of restoration,” Dent said.

The study found that young regenerating forests were made up mostly of trees dispersed by small birds. But 

as the forest aged, trees dispersed by larger birds increased. Surprisingly, however, across all forest ages—

from 20 years old to old growth—most plants were dispersed by terrestrial mammals.

“This result is quite unusual for post-agricultural regenerating forests,” Dent said. “It is likely that the presence 

of large tracts of preserved forests near our secondary stands, coupled with low hunting, has allowed the 

mammal populations to thrive and to bring an influx of seeds from neighboring patches.”

“We hope this information helps practitioners to structure their restoration practices by enabling animals that 

disperse seeds to help the restoration process and speed up forest recovery,” Estrada-Villegas said.