The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Issue date: 9/29/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Michael Kalush Diana Wall, director of the School of Global Environmental Sustainability, focuses her studies on sustaining soil ecosystems. An advocate for educating students on sustainability, Wall was honored as one of CSU's University Distinguished Professors in April.

Diana Wall first became fascinated with nematodes, sometimes microscopic, multi-cellular worms, as an undergraduate when she realized how similar they were to humans.

"I realized that they were like us, but I could see right through them with a microscope," Wall, the founding director of CSU's School of Global Environmental Sustainability," Wall said. "I could see their esophagi working, their ovaries and all of their parts."

Nematodes are found throughout the world because they have adapted to live in starkly contrasting environments, from those in Antarctica to underwater.

Wall studies these creatures, whose digestive, nervous and reproductive systems are akin to a human's, as part of her study of soil biodiversity. She is working to determine what happens when soil, a habitat for thousands of species, is disturbed and how people can sustain it, in turn preserving the environment around it.

A CSU biology professor, Wall, is exploring how the abundant life in the soil contributes to healthy, fertile and productive soil ecosystems.

As part of this research she has traveled with her research team to the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica 18 times since 1989 to see how nematodes and other organisms survive in the frigid environment and evaluate what happens when the soil ecosystems are affected by change.

She said researchers erect little greenhouse-like structures on spots of soil, warm them to see the effects and then fly the soil back to CSU to study.

In honor of her research, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names named Wall Valley, Antarctica after the CSU professor.

The New York Times was among the publications that have documented and reported on the team's research.

Earlier this month, Wall used her research to contribute to CSU's International Colloquium on Global Challenges for Sustainability. She hosted two of the sessions: "Biodiversity 911" and "Hot Topics in Sustainability."

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