Christoph Nolte, a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, has been selected as the first recipient of the Marshall Weinberg Population, Development, and Climate Change Fellowship. Nolte is studying the economic tradeoffs of land conservation in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.
Out of 10 Michigan Society Postdoctoral Fellows selected university wide this year, two—Kimberley Kinder and Elizabeth Pringle—are affiliated with the School of Natural Resources and Environment. Each is finishing their first of three years as an assistant professor and using funding from the Fellows program to pursue research projects.
Scientists recently discovered nitrogen that falls from the atmosphere in acid rain can influence large tracts of sugar maples in North America. The atmospheric nitrogen in acid rain can affect forest ecosystems by acidifying soils and causing nutrient imbalances. Sugar maples in northeastern North America are especially vulnerable. Vast maple areas have been affected by this acidification process, which depletes soil calcium in already calcium-poor soils such as those of the Eastern United States.
North American forests appear to have a greater capacity to soak up heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas than researchers had previously anticipated. As a result, they could help slow the pace of human-caused climate warming more than most scientists had thought, a U-M ecologist and his colleagues have concluded. The results of a 12-year study at an experimental forest in northeastern Wisconsin challenge several long-held assumptions about how future forests will respond to the rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide blamed for human-caused climate change, said University of Michigan microbial ecologist Donald Zak, lead author of a paper published online this week in Ecology Letters.
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.
The second conference of the Initiative on Climate Adaptation Research and Understanding through the Social Sciences, or ICARUS-2, will take place at the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) in the University of Michigan's Dana Building, Ann Arbor campus, May 5-8. The theme for ICARUS-2 is Climate Vulnerability and Adaption: Marginal Peoples and Environment. More than 100 papers are registered to be presented by scholars and researchers from around the world. ICARUS-1was held at University of Illinois in 2010. Since last year, interest in climate adaptation has grown substantially, and ICARUS-2 is twice as large in terms of papers submitted and registered attendees.
The second conference of the Initiative on Climate Adaptation Research and Understanding through the Social Sciences, or ICARUS, will take place at SNRE in the Dana Building May 5 to 8. The theme is Climate Vulnerability and Adaption: Marginal Peoples and Environment. More than 150 papers will be presented by scholars and researchers from around the world. ICARUS II is twice as large as the first conference, held at University of Illinois in 2010, in terms of papers submitted and registered attendees.
Doctoral student Baruani Mshale received the prestigious International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). The fellowship will support his forest-related dissertation work in Tanzania.
SNRE Professor and Associate Dean Arun Agrawal was one of 180 recipients of the 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation supports scholars, artists and scientists selected from 3,000 applicants on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise. Professor Agrawal will use the fellowship support to complete a book called "Poverty and Adaptation."