New Adjunct Faculty member, Bethany Bradley, has received $1.5 million grant

Our newest member of NRC, Bethany Bradley, is sure getting off to a fast start! She and 3 collaborators from Northern Arizona University just landed a $1.5 million grant that runs from 2010-2013. The project is Funded by the Department of Defense, Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) and titled: Integrated spatial models of non-native plant invasion, fire risk, and wildlife habitat to support conservation of military lands in the arid Southwest.   The study looks at interactions between plant invasion and increases in fire frequency and magnitude in the Sonoran Desert. The individual and synergistic impacts of invasive plants, fire, and climate change on native habitat are likely to affect the endangered Sonoran pronghorn and other threatened, sensitive, or at-risk species in complex ways. The objective of this research is to integrate empirically-based models of non-native plant invasion, fire, and sensitive wildlife habitat in a spatially explicit decision-support package that informs sustainable resource management and recovery of native habitats...
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American Forest Foundation announces 2009 Research Grant recipient for comprehensive study on tax policy and family forests

In the United States, about 35% of the forestland is owned by 10 million family forest owners. Most of these owners hold relatively small tracts of land; however, their collective management behavior has an enormous impact on the sustainability of the nation’s forests. A variety of policies and programs have been developed to inspire conservation on private lands. Prominent among these are tax incentives (e.g., reduced property, estate and inheritance taxes), favorable tax credits and deductions, favorable capital gains treatment of timber income, as well as incentives linked to specific stewardship practices such as wildlife protection, recreation, and reforestation.  The American Forest Foundation ( http://www.affoundation.org/ ) is providing researchers from the Family Forest Research Center ...
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Associate Professor Timothy Randhir and Graduate Student Deborah Shriver, are creating new tool for watershed protection planning

Article from In the Loop: http://www.umass.edu/loop/talkingpoints/articles/90510.php   A new land-use modeling tool being developed by associate professor of Natural Resources Conservation Timothy Randhir and doctoral candidate Deborah Shriver could help Western Massachusetts communities plan new buildings, streets and other improvements while protecting drinking water quality, loss of biodiversity and damaged wildlife habitat. In recent publications, Randhir and Shriver report that they are using data on such inputs as sediment load, high priority habitat, stream flow, drainage patterns, soil types and vegetation cover, for example, to create a Watershed Impairment Index that links quantified data with a prioritization process and runs different scenarios for different options. This emerging research area provides decision support for sustainable use of resources, especially water, they say. “The goal is to reach a balance that both protects the watershed but allows reasonable development to take place,” Randhir said, because “by only focusing on urban development which seems to be a natural tendency among many local political leaders for understandable reasons...
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