Throughout the internship with US Fish and Wildlife Service's Department of Bird Habitat Conservation, Helen worked directly with project partners such as Ducks Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, and Pheasants Forever, in order to coordinate geospatial data exchange with the NAWCA/NMBCA grants office.
Conservation Ecology
Assistant professor Maria Carmen Lemos is a co-PI on a new project lead by Purdue University to develop decision-support tools to help corn and soybean growers adapt their practices to changes in climate. Lemos will be focusing on understanding how farmers in Michigan, Indiana, Iowa and Nebraska use, or don't use, climate information and on the role of social networks—farmers, extension agents, and farmers' advisers—on knowledge dissemination and uptake.
NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco hailed the science partnerships between her agency and the University of Michigan as an important tool in addressing the nation's environmental challenges.
SNRE Professor Ivette Perfecto is receiving this year's ERHC Diversity Award from the Ecological Society of America during its Annual Meeting next month.
The award recognizes her "outstanding contributions to increasing current and future diversity in the ecological community" and is given by the ESA's Education and Human Resources Committee (EHRC). The EHRC Diversity Award recognizes long-standing contributions to increasing the diversity of future ecologists through mentoring, teaching, or outreach.
One of the nation' leading researchers in children's environmental health, Marie Lynn Miranda, will be the new dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE), effective Jan. 1, 2012, pending approval from the Board of Regents.
Watch the video about Michigan Sea Grant, Out of the Blue episode 310, the Big Ten Network. The video premiered on the Big Ten Network recently and will be re-broadcast periodically, see: http://www.ootb.tv/episode.php?episode=310&part=2&video=SeaGrant
A report released by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts a 2011 Gulf dead zone of at least 8,500 square miles, which would make it the largest dead zone on record, due to increased stream flows from the flooding of the Mississippi River. "Stream flows were nearly double normal during May, delivering massive amounts of nutrients to the Gulf, and that's what drives the dead zone," said Don Scavia, Special Counsel to the U-M President for Sustainability, director of the Graham Sustainability Institute and SNRE professor and a member of NOAA's Gulf hypoxia research team.
Extreme flooding of the Mississippi River this spring is expected to result in the largest Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" on record, according to a University of Michigan aquatic ecologist and his colleagues. The 2011 forecast, released today by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), calls for a Gulf dead zone of between 8,500 and 9,421 square miles, an area roughly the size of New Hampshire.
Post-doc researcher Nick Reo has received the Toihuarewa Visiting Indigenous Fellowship, designed is to attract international indigenous scholars to Victoria University to build indigenous research capacity and enhance engagement and collaboration with Victoria'ss M' ori research program.
"I have followed a career path that did not exist when I graduated from the University of Michigan. But this great University gave me the skills to create it," Peter C. Mertz, Visiting Committee member and alumnus, delivered this year's Commencement address April 30. Mertz is chief executive officer and co-founder of Global Forest Partners (GFP), one of the largest timber investment management organizations in the world.