Ten graduate students at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment are sharing The Wilderness Society's largest annual scholarship award for their research into public lands, renewable energy and California deserts.

The Gloria Barron Wilderness Society Scholarship is given annually - usually to an individual student - to support research and preparation of an academic paper on some aspect of wilderness. This year, judges bestowed the 2009í‚  Society Scholarship upon the 10-student SNRE team because of the topicality and interdisciplinary breadth of their research project. (For more on the project, please visit http://www.snre.umich.edu/node/6917.)

"The judges were definitely drawn to the timeliness of the project," said Dr. Spencer Phillips, vice president of Ecology & Economics Research at The Wilderness Society, based in Washington, D.C. "Renewable energy development that will affect public lands is an important issue, and federal land managers - along with many others - need to get up to speed quickly.í‚   The analysis and tools the SNRE group proposes to develop will be invaluable."

The students' research started earlier this year as part of a year-long master's project. The 400,000-member Society had earlier volunteered to become a client to a team of SNRE students. Next, the students worked with Society leaders to define the scope of the project, leading to the master's proposal.

"When combined with expanded conservation and efficiency, renewable energy is key to the West's energy and economic future and to the nation's response to the challenges of climate change," the students wrote in their project overview. "Significant opportunities exist to promote distributed generation of solar and wind energy, but large-scale central generation will likely be an important component of a national transition to clean energy. Solar and wind energy generation are the leading technologies that offer the potential to be deployed at the utility-scale."

The students' research, including conducting interviews, creating databases, reviewing policies and synthesizing reports, will continue this year, culminating in the spring of 2010 when they present their findings. The master's project's title is: "Renewable Energy in the California Desert: Mechanisms for Evaluating Solar Development on Public Lands".

Eventually, the students will develop and apply a list of environmental screens to renewable energy projects in various California deserts. The list includes criteria such as distance to transmission, distance to load, impacts to wildlife habitat and impacts to wildlife species. The students then plan to compile, analyze and translate the environmental screens for use in guiding renewable energy development information regarding the impact of renewable energy projectsí‚   on important environmental factors.

Dr. Phillips said he was particularly impressed by the multi-disciplinary approach of the project and the students' intention to use geographic information system tools to tie the various types of information together. The interdisciplinary nature of the research is rooted in the students' academic interests: many are pursuing dual degrees at the University of Michigan. The students are: Jesse Fernandes, Natalie Flynn, Samantha Gibbes, Matt Griffis, Takahiro Isshiki, Sean Killian, Laura Palombi, Nerissa Rujanavech, Sarah Tomsky and Merry Tondro. Their adviser is SNRE Professor Steve Yaffee.

"We are thrilled and honored to be selected for this prestigious award," said Tomsky, a member of the student team who also served an internship this summer at TWS. "The scholarship will greatly bolster our capacity to pursue our research on this important topic."

Once TWS receives and reviews the final report, the Ecology and Economics Research will decide how to make the best use of its data and recommendations. "The Wilderness Society builds its conservation advocacy on a foundation of solid science and the Ecology & Economics Research Department is where we lay that foundation," Dr. Phillips said. "Our staff of 20 includes 12 Ph.D.-level scientists, and our current research efforts currently address pressing questions about mineral exploration and development, forest and fire management, climate change, and many other issues affecting public lands."

The Gloria Barron Wilderness Society Scholarship, which comes with a $10,000 award, was created in honor of Gloria Barron, an educator and tireless advocate for wilderness protection. The Society encourages the publication of the research work in an academic journal or other appropriate medium. The research paper must address an aspect of the establishment, protection or management of wilderness.

About The Wilderness Society
Since 1935, The Wilderness Society has led the conservation movement in wilderness protection, writing and passing the landmark Wilderness Act and winning lasting protection for 107 million acres of Wilderness, including 56 million acres of spectacular lands in Alaska, eight million acres of fragile desert lands in California and millions more throughout the nation.