NRT-HDR: Convergent Research in Integrative and Public Land Management

This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award to Western Colorado University will train diverse future scientists to help land management institutions respond to the dramatic challenges faced by American public lands. These challenges include global environmental change, rapid political and economic shifts, increased recreation demand, and varying patterns of resource development.

Land managers face innumerable dilemmas associated with these accelerating changes that demand both new ecological knowledge and the capacity to effectively utilize that knowledge within complex social systems. The increasing public availability of big data and powerful computing platforms fundamentally change the questions ecologists can ask and answer regarding such land management challenges.

The project anticipates training more than 120 students, including 16 funded trainees, from the Master in Ecology and Master in Environmental Management programs. Trainees will develop, implement and assess adaptive management approaches aligned with rapidly changing environmental conditions. This traineeship will cultivate a new generation of scientists to inform and manage ecological and and land management projects at the scale, speed, and direction needed to respond to ecological changes reshaping our planet.

By converging big data, sensing technology, and machine learning with the traditional site-level work of field biologists, the research to be conducted by the NRT trainees will generate transformative knowledge of ecological processes. Trainees will employ state-of-the-art data tools to evaluate management dilemmas, inform on-the-ground decision-making, and evaluate the effects of response strategies upon species and ecosystems.

Students will develop big-data skills through collaborations with engineering and computer science colleagues to build machine learning algorithms or customize data generation tools. The program will advance research collaborations undertaken in partnership with ecological researchers, land management agencies, and the public. Intervention strategies will be designed and implemented within an experimental framework to facilitate the rigorous assessment of effects and effectiveness.

In addition to developing cutting-edge research capabilities, NRT trainees will attain the leadership skills necessary to analyze and apply scientific knowledge to the complex realities of planning, policy development, and management of public lands. By integrating targeted training in ecological data science with professional leadership, the traineeship will foster a high-return, interdisciplinary synergy between science and professional master’s degree programs.

The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The program is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high priority interdisciplinary or convergent research areas through comprehensive traineeship models that are innovative, evidence-based, and aligned with changing workforce and research needs.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.