Professor Dennis Ryan receives George E. Stone Award

The Massachusetts Tree Wardens and Foresters Association presented its George E. Stone Award to Dennis Ryan, professor of arboriculture and urban forestry in the Department of Environmental Conservation, on Jan. 15 at the organization's annual meeting in Sturbridge. The Stone Award the highest award bestowed by the Massachusetts Tree Wardens and Foresters Association (MTWFA). It exemplifies a member of MTWFA who has continuously demonstrated outstanding dedication, with many hours of volunteer service to the organization....
Read More

Alumnus, Christopher Neill named director of MBL Ecosystem Center

January 2, 2013 By bready- Marine Biological Lab   Christopher Neill, a senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and the Phyllis and Charles M. Rosenthal Director of the Brown-MBL Partnership, has been named Director of the MBL Ecosystems Center. The Ecosystems Center is the environmental research division of the MBL. Center scientists use experiments and modeling to study how complex ecological systems work and how they respond to changing conditions caused by human actions. “I am honored to lead an extraordinary group of scientists at MBL that in many ways pioneered modern ecosystem science,” said Neill. “This is an important time for our Center and for our global ecosystem. As humans play a greater and greater role in shaping the planet, we need more than ever to understand the earth’s basic ecological life support systems and to apply that knowledge to sustain working ecosystems, our biological heritage, and human well-being. My priorities will be to maintain the Center’s role as a...
Read More

Dr. Adrian Jordaan awarded $325K Pew Charitable Trust

Dr. Adrian Jordaan was awarded $324,999 for Pew Charitable Trust for his project entitled:"Evaluating the historical role of forage fish in lost fisheries production: Implications for future sustainability" "The Lenfest Ocean Program is a grantmaking program that funds scientific research on policy-relevant topics concerning the world’s oceans and communicates the results of the supported research to decision makers and other interested audiences." "Research projects supported by the Lenfest Ocean Program are motivated by policy questions for which additional scientific information could help inform decision makers of relevant marine science. They focus on the environmental, economic and social impacts of fishing, fisheries management and aquaculture." "The Program does not accept unsolicited proposals. Instead, staff consult with scientists, stakeholders and decision makers to distill policy-relevant research questions and then canvass the scientific community to identify experts within their fields to formulate and conduct informative projects. A critical factor in developing research projects is determining the type of project that will be directly relevant to marine policy...
Read More

Bethany Bradley tracks role of invasive cheatgrass in larger, more frequent western fires

Provided by: In the Loop  New research that relied in part on satellite images suggests that cheatgrass, an invasive species brought west by settlers in the 1800s, is one cause for the larger, hotter and more frequent range fires experienced recently in the Great Basin of the American West. The arid region covers about 230,000 square miles (600,000 km) over much of Nevada and parts of Utah, Colorado, Idaho, California and Oregon.   Bethany Bradley, a biogeographer in the Environmental Conservation Department, brought her expertise in remote sensing and spatial analysis to the study, which was led by fire expert Jennifer Balch of Penn State University.  Bradley used data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectoradiometer from 2000 to 2009 to detect burned areas to create the first land cover map for the Great Basin area. With it, the two researchers and their colleagues combined data sets, matched fire dates and perimeters with land cover data to reach their conclusions, reported in the current online edition of...
Read More