EPA to Fund Wetlands Assessment Work

The U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be providing $300,000 in additional funding for an important research and extension project led by Kevin McGarigal and Scott Jackson of the Department of Natural Resources Conservation. The project is a collaborative effort involving the Department’s Landscape Ecology Program, UMass Extension and state agencies to use the Conservation Assessment and Prioritization System (CAPS) as the basis for a comprehensive wetlands monitoring and assessment program. CAPS is a computer software program and a method to prioritize land for conservation based on the assessment of ecological integrity for various ecological communities (e.g. forested wetland, shrub swamp, headwater stream) within a particular landscape. CAPS provides an objective and scientifically credible approach for assessing ecological integrity and supporting decision-making for land acquisition, ecological restoration, project review and permitting to protect habitat and biodiversity. The approach has been under development by UMass researchers over the past several years. The CAPS Project Team includes Kevin, Scott, Brad Compton, Kasey Rolih,...
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UMass Amherst Scientists Collaborate to Understand Animal Migrations with $533,000 NSF Grant

The movements of all animals are affected by their need for resources, and in particular, food. Where and how grazing animals move often depends on where the best vegetation resources can be found, and how predictable this food is from year to year. Some ungulate species with predictable environments (caribou in Alaska and wildebeest in Africa, for example) migrate seasonally. Other species (gazelles in Mongolia, for example) appear to make large-scale, long-range movements that are seemingly unpredictable. This “nomadism” likely occurs when the availability and location of resources vary considerably by season and by year. The National Science Foundation has awarded UMass Amherst’s Todd Fuller and Craig Nicolson $533,000, and their collaborator Bill Fagan at the University of Maryland College Park another $147,000, to make sense of these seasonal and annual movement strategies for individual gazelles in Mongolia (new field studies) and caribou in Alaska (historical data). The researchers will combine theoretical computer models and landscape-scale satellite images of vegetation with...
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