Resolution of Respect James Roman Gosz

Jim Gosz demonstrating vegetation sampling techniques to the Desert Field Biology students in the Indios Mountains, Texas, USA. Photo credit: R.R Parmenter. Professor James Roman Gosz passed away on July 4, 2025 at his home in Princeton, Idaho, United States, at the age of 85. He is survived by his son Rusty and daughter Stephanie along with numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His wonderful wife of over 50 years, MJ, passed away in 2022. Many people who attended workshops at the University of New Mexico Sevilleta Field Station will remember her for her delicious, calorie-forward food and kind hospitality. Jim was born on May 4, 1940 in Menasha, Wisconsin, United States, to parents Roman and Doretta Gosz. He earned a bachelor's degree from Michigan Tech in 1963 and his PhD from the University of Idaho in 1968. He held postdoctoral positions at Dartmouth College and Cornell University from 1968 to 1970, working at Hubbard Brook with Gene Likens and Frank Bormann. He joined the Faculty of Biology at the University of New Mexico in 1970 and rose to the rank of Professor in 1979. Jim was the founding Principal Investigator of the Sevilleta Long-term Ecological Research Program that was established in 1988 and continues today, a nearly 40-year legacy of his creativity and leadership. While at UNM he served as Director of the New Mexico EPSCoR Program as well as a participant on countless state agency committees and working groups. He “retired” from UNM in 2006 to take up administrative positions at the University of Idaho, including stints as Associate Dean for Research and Special Assistant to the Vice President for Research and Economic Development. Jim was a card-carrying ecosystem ecologist. Overall, he authored/co-authored around 115 publications during his career on a variety of topics. His postdoctoral work at Hubbard Brook focused on the contribution of leaf and stem decomposition to nutrient release and organic matter in forest soils (Gosz et al. 1972, 1973, 1976). After moving to New Mexico, he established a research program investigating the impacts of ski area development on forest ecosystem processes and stream water quality (Gosz 1977, 1978, Moore et al. 1978, White et al. 1978) along with more traditional ecosystem studies on nutrient budgets in high elevation forests in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains (Gosz 1980a, 1980b). Jim published on many ecological topics, including sustainable management (Gosz 1992a, 1992b, 1999a), the use of strontium isotopes as indicators of in situ versus atmospheric inputs of nutrients (Gosz and Moore 1989), biodiversity in drylands (Shachak et al. 2004), and the value of long-term ecological research (Gosz 1999b, Hobbie et al. 2003). Heck, he even co-authored a paper with his son Rusty on interactions between the two dominant grasses, blue and black grama, in the grasslands at the Sevilleta (Gosz and Gosz 1996). How cool is that? His interests gradually broadened over time and he contributed to several conceptual papers on boundary or ecotone dynamics (Weins et al. 1985, Gosz and Sharpe 1989, Gosz 1993, 1995). He was also developing an interest in lower elevation dryland ecosystems in New Mexico (Crawford and Gosz 1982, 1986, Gosz et al. 1992). These ideas and interests were at the core of the first Sevilleta LTER proposal that focused on “Life on the Edge” funded by NSF in 1988. The Sevilleta LTER program is located in and around the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge (SNWR) in central New Mexico, where, by dumb luck and an interesting Holocene history, a number of ecosystem boundary (transition) zones occur ranging from riparian areas along the Rio Grande to desert grassland and shrubland to conifer forests in the nearby mountains. Jim and his colleagues had the vision to investigate ecosystem shifts driven by climate warming, the El Niño Southern Oscillation and land-use change at the boundaries of ecosystems where species are likely to be most sensitive to global environmental change. Jim Gosz explaining the small mammal exclosure experiment at the Sevilleta to Scott Collins in 1997. Photo credit: R.R. Parmenter. Jim was also fascinated by shiny objects and new technologies. He was referred to as an “opportunivore.” Co-author Doug Moore often became his foil for trying out some of the new technology that he experimented with. For example, he tested the use of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to measure trace gas fluxes at kilometer scales rather than point sources (Gosz et al. 1988, 1990, Dahm et al. 1996). The spatial and temporal variability of rainfall in dryland ecosystems is challenging to quantify and many convective storms during summer produce rain events that are not detected by local met stations. He investigated the potential of using the number of cloud-to-ground lightning strikes during monsoon storms to estimate local precipitation amount and fill in the gaps on rainfall amounts between met stations at the Sevilleta (Gosz et al. 1995, Potter et al. 1998). Several experiments at the Sevilleta were in 300 × 300 m plots to accommodate mammal trapping webs (Parmenter et al. 2003) and 100 LANDSAT pixels to estimate vegetation productivity responses from satellites. Jim was an enthusiastic supporter of the NSF plan to create the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) because of its high-tech approach to environmental monitoring across large spatial and long temporal scales. With other UNM colleagues, he approached then-Senator Pete Domenici's (R-NM) office for funding (earmark pork) to build a large laboratory building at the Sevilleta Field Station (Sevilleta Education and Research Facility or SERF) in hopes that it would address many of US Fish and Wildlife Service's unfunded mandates for ecosystem monitoring in the SNWR, including the potential to support Senator Domenici's Rio Grande initiative and UNM faculty colleague Cliff Crawford's Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program. A short time after SERF was built, NEON issued a call for proposals to establish long-term core monitoring sites. We (Scott Collins, along with some UNM colleagues) proposed that Sevilleta would be an ideal core site within NEON based on its ecological setting at biome transition zones, long-term research history, and the availability of SERF. NEON demurred. Jim was a consummate master of science program organization. In 1991, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) published a landmark document written by a team of ecological luminaries called the Sustainable Biosphere Initiative (SBI; Lubchenco et al. 1991). The paper laid out a research and education agenda to address the ever-growing global environmental crisis. ESA then received funding from the NSF to carry out that agenda, and Jim Gosz took leave from UNM in 1992 to serve as the first Executive Director of the SBI Office in Washington, DC, which eventually morphed into the Office of Science at ESA. While in DC he met Dr. Mary Clutter who was the Assistant Director for Biological Sciences at NSF. She was so impressed with Jim that she lured him away from ESA to serve as the Division Director of the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) at NSF from 1993 to 1994, where he was Scott Collins' boss. Previously, Jim had been a “rotator” Program Director in the Ecosystem Studies Program in DEB from 1984 to 1986. Jim then returned to UNM in 1995, but he clearly had bigger goals in mind after his leadership experience in DC. Jim Gosz leading a discussion at a workshop to establish the International LTER Network. Photo credit: R.B. Waide. On the international front, Jim along with Jerry Franklin (University of Washington) organized a workshop at the 1993 LTER All-Scientists Meeting to which they invited a number of international representatives to promote the idea of creating a global long-term research network. With support from International Programs at NSF, Gosz worked tirelessly to develop collaborations between scientists from the United States and other countries contemplating long-term research networks (Gosz 1996). He made presentations, led scientific exchanges, and established rapport with international colleagues, going so far as to partake of a meal consisting entirely of snake courses, followed by a shot of bile. He arrived in South Africa twice without luggage, but did enjoy the safari outfit he bought at the tourist shop in Skukuza in Kruger National Park. On his watch, LTER scientists and staff engaged 44 countries interested in establishing long-term research programs. The message was simple: the more sites collecting long-term data, the better our ability to understand fundamental ecological principles playing out over the long term. Gosz argued that the rationale used to establish the US LTER was universal, and he was proven right. Gosz served as the first Chair of ILTER from 1995 to 2003 (Vanderbilt and Gaiser 2017). By 2003, long-term networks had been established in 25 countries. At present, ILTER has 39 member networks with over 750 research sites (https://www.ilter.network/seite.mv?). Jim's contribution to the success of ILTER was recognized at the 2016 ILTER Open Science Meeting in Kruger National Park, South Africa. What an amazing legacy of leadership and foresight. Jim Gosz was incredibly dedicated to his family and supported his children in their 4-H and Future Farmers of America programs. He built his house in the eastern mountains outside of Albuquerque and the house he moved into in Idaho. His family raised pigs and other large and small farm animals. He made cabinets and furniture, tended his garden, and canned the vegetables he grew. He rooted for the Green Bay Packers. Like most of us, he loved being in the field. Indeed, he was an avid outdoorsman. He recounted how he and a group of fellow graduate students supplemented their diet with wild game. His love of the outdoors continued in New Mexico where some of his first field projects occurred in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. In fact, Jim unintentionally played matchmaker for at least three couples who were student employees during some of the early years, presumably a result of the fact that everyone spent much time doing work on his watershed studies. This meant collecting data all day and then camping out at night. Needless to say, there were many campfires where some adult beverages may have been consumed and many stories told. In any case, three weddings followed in fairly close order… none shotgun. His love of the outdoors extended to his house in the mountains east of Albuquerque, which was frequently visited by bears and other wildlife. He and MJ often invited colleagues and students to stay in their house when they were traveling, as they did when Bob Waide first arrived in New Mexico from Puerto Rico. Bob did not fully comprehend their dedication to the outdoors until he discovered that the master bedroom in the house, where he slept, was unheated. Jim was committed to excellence in teaching undergraduate and graduate students in the classroom and the field. His long list of courses included General Ecology, Biological Adaptations, Biometry, Physiological Plant Ecology, Soil Ecosystems, Ecosystem Ecology, Ecosystem Concepts, Field Ecosystem Studies, Desert Field Biology, Ecosystem Dynamics of US Ecosystems, and several special topics courses, including Tree Secondary Chemistry, Nutrient Dynamics, and Resource Limitations in Ecosystems. As an example of the enormous amount of time that Jim dedicated to teaching, in 2000, he joined Bob Parmenter and David Lightfoot in team—teaching a Desert Field Biology class for biology—major seniors and graduate students; the class involved 4- to 9-day camping field trips through remote regions of the Chihuahuan, Sonoran, and Mojave Deserts, teaching the students about the flora and fauna while collecting long-term data on permanent sites for eventual analysis back in the classroom. His knowledge and skills in teaching, along with truck repair and first aid, were greatly appreciated by the students! Jim Gosz was one of the kindest, most generous, and energetic people we had the pleasure to know and work with. His broadly based scientific publications speak for themselves, but his leadership and organizational skills have left a legacy that will far surpass the impact of publications. Jim was a “big tent” guy. He established a 40-year-long research legacy at the Sevilleta that continues to unite and integrate research by faculty at UNM and elsewhere. He led the transformation of the LTER Network, and through his unselfish and tireless efforts, he helped to establish an international network of long-term research sites that unite ecologists globally. Along with all of these accomplishments, we miss his good-natured smile, his calm and pleasant demeanor, and his positive can-do attitude. Other literature cited