State of Missouri’s Post

We partner with the US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) and Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE) to manage a Community* Science Water Quality Monitoring Program in the Upper Poudre Watershed. Since 2019, CPRW’s community science volunteers have collected over 900 water samples. In 2023, nine volunteers participated throughout the year to sample 30 sites, totaling 264 volunteer hours during the season. Our Community Science Water Quality Monitoring Program has three main goals: 📋Develop a baseline data set of water quality in high priority reaches (based on CPRW’s Upper Poudre Resilience Plan) 💧Collect water quality data to measure the impact of prescribed fire, an increasingly important forest management tool, on our waterways 🔥Monitor the impacts from the Cameron Peak Fire and track outcomes from post-fire restoration *You may have noticed we changed the name of this program from “citizen science” to “community science,” a more inclusive term. Citizenship has no bearing on people’s ability to participate in this program and we want the words we use to reflect that this work is inclusive of all folks in our community. This change mimics the recent decision by the Citizen Science Association to change their name to the Association for Advancing Participatory Sciences. To learn more about this program visit: https://lnkd.in/gVBXBtW4 #communityscience #waterquality #poudreriver #wildfire #CameronPeakFire #poudrewatershed #science

Invasive buckthorn is damaging to landscapes and notoriously hard to control, but collaborative discoveries between UMN researchers, Friends of the Mississippi River, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and many others, are making a difference. "There is never going to be one silver bullet for ridding the landscape of buckthorn... But, with an ever-growing roster of strategies... every new tool is welcome in the effort to relegate the plant to a less damaging role." Funding for this research is supported by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources. https://lnkd.in/gaX-xYV2

Check out our new paper! “The people who live, work, and recreate within bear habitat play a crucial role in their conservation. While the public is often enthusiastic about grizzly bears, and opportunistically report their observations to government staff, these reports are not systematic or rigorously collected and lack key information. As such, we developed GrizzTracker as a community science program. Following several years of successful deployment, we analyzed community scientist data and evaluated the efficacy of the program through an online user survey. We found that the GrizzTracker app was useful as a data collection and public engagement tool, yielding information for applied management, and that community scientists were generally satisfied. We provide considerations for future program development, including considerations for human, social, technological, and financial capital investment related to design, development, and implementation of data collection protocols, the importance of clearly communicating outcomes, and opportunities for educational outreach.” https://lnkd.in/gW9C3XFg

New National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator Grant to Advance Wetlands Mapping and Conservation across the US Our team is very excited to share the announcement of a grant award (https://lnkd.in/gpsURU2X) by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for our project “Mapping the nation’s wetlands for equitable water quality, monitoring, conservation, and policy development." The Phase I NSF Convergence Accelerator team is led by the University of Washington School of Environmental and Forest Sciences (SEFS) (Dr. Meghan Halabisky, Dr. L. Monika Moskal, Dr. Aji John, and Maureen Duane), Dark Creature LLC (Dr. Maureen Ryan), TerrainWorks (Dr. Dan Miller), 10,000 Years Institute (Jill Silver), Omfishient Consulting (Lauren Kuehne), Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife (Dr. Max Lambert), Numbers and Strings (Jesse Anderson), and Social Ecological Solutions (Dr. Stacy Lischka). Our team combines expertise in remote sensing, wetlands science, water equity, and wetlands conservation across diverse sectors including academia, industry, non-profit, and government. This work is intended to bring the power of remote sensing to accurately map and create data-driven insights to support diverse users in wetland conservation and restoration. The NSF Convergence Accelerator is a highly unique program within NSF, and our project team will work through a 6-month curriculum focused on business development, use-inspired research, communications, and team science to move the research toward a technology solution that can result in strong societal impact. If you work on or are interested in wetlands mapping, monitoring, or decision-making, please contact the project team - we want to hear from you! #wetlands #EarthObservation #remotesensing #waterequity #naturebased #conservation #restoration  #NSFFunded #NSFConvergenceAccelerator

PCA Weekly News - Main Headlines for 19th August 2023: - Where there's mould, there's money - The positives & negatives of invasive weeds - Next live webinar: New build watershock - IPCC23 Programme Click on the link to view more 👉: https://lnkd.in/eQ-dCiQ7 #PCA #PCAweeklynews #mould #invasiveweeds #watershock

Collaboration is central to meaningful progress in R&D and adoption of new technologies. A recent USDA Forest Service and ESTCP site visit for #wildfire fire researchers to the Silas Little Experimental Forrest—a 592-acre swath of land in the New Jersey Pine Barrens for wildfire science technology innovation and field experimentation—highlighted collaborative efforts within the wildfire community and the strength of the DoD’s National Innovation Landscape Network to advance #ClimateAdaptation solutions. https://bit.ly/4c8qAAn

My dissertation and underlying database are now publicly downloadable for exploring Adirondack Park policy and patterns in the social-ecological system over 250 years: https://lnkd.in/empmscGD and https://lnkd.in/eHNyFiG7. The database holds thousands of coded, geospatial events relating to recreation, energy, natural resource and watershed management, laws, conflicts, partnerships and much more - the who, what, when and where of Forest Preserve and public/private governance. Let me know what you think!

Big news! 🏆💰 NACD's 2024 poster contest added 2 new categories this year w/ cash prizes, inspired by a brilliant 2023 poster contest student entry from Michigan's own Tuscola Conservation District (see image)! New 2024 NACD Poster Contest Categories: ⭐ “Braille Poster Contest” = for blind & low-vision students ⭐ "Additional Assist Poster Contest" = for students who may benefit from assistance in completing their posters. MACD is ALL about supporting creative initiatives, advocating for conservation efforts + education in Michigan, & celebrating inclusivity in all its beautiful forms. 🌈🎨 What a wonderful new way to explore them all at once! ⭐ NACD's annual Stewardship Week Poster Contest is open to grades K-12, including public, private & homeschool students. Submissions accepted from 2/20/24 to 12/1/24. Learn more at: https://lnkd.in/gPagEGgN 🌳 #MayTheForestBeWithYouAlways 🌲 #rootedinconservation Image description: This is a photo of last year’s poster entry that inspired our new Braille poster category. The poster depicts the water cycle. It is designed with tactile elements like textured gray clouds, snow-covered mountains, blue, wavy lakes, and green trees that create a landscape scene. Braille lettering accompanies the poster’s title, “Water Cycle,” and each element of water’s journey: Condensation/clouds, Precipitation/rain, runoff from land, groundwater, Evaporation from bodies of water, respiration/plants, and back up to the clouds. Raised arrows indicate the continuous movement of the water through this cycle.

USFWS issues final rule on updates to Section 10 of the ESA. The changes are meant to "clarify the use of enhancement of survival permits and incidental take permits; clarify USFWS authority to issue these permits for non-listed species without also including a listed species; simplify the requirements for enhancement of survival permits by combining safe harbor agreements and candidate conservation agreements with assurances into one agreement type; and incorporate portions of USFWS five-point policies for safe harbor agreements, candidate conservation agreements with assurances, and habitat conservation plans into the regulations to reduce uncertainty." Have questions? Let HDR help you navigate the new changes.

Reminder: The Ontario Gov. still plans to build two new highways over pristine agricultural and conservation land - HWY 413 through Vaughan and Caledon, as well as the Bradford Bypass. To make this happen, the Ontario government has over the past few years systematically removed most regulatory, environmental, planning rules to accelerate approvals and begin putting shovels in the ground. "Get it Done" policies to limit oversight and transparency on this, and other, large infrastructure projects included dissolving the Region of Peel, removing planning authority from Regional Governments, restricting Conservation Authority powers, etc... In this time of fiscal constraint...can we really afford to build more highways?