Natural Resource Management

Fellow J. Morgan Grove writes that within some neighborhoods, scientists are documenting a connection between trees and a specific social improvement: a reduction in crime. These studies combine modern mapping technology with spatial and economic statistics to compare crime levels between similar urban neighborhoods in the same city.

Falmouth is at the forefront of efforts to reverse the spread of invasive plants in Maine. In the past five years the town has beaten back infestations on public land, and it is now in the second year of a program to kill roadside invasives by spraying them with a 2 percent glyphosate solution. Glyphosate is a common herbicide that is sold under the brand name Roundup. ...

Fellow Marissa McMahan is working with Maine locals and Venetian fishermen to turn the invasive green crab into a gourmet dish known in Italy as moleche.

In a study published this month in the journal Ecological Applications, Gary Lovett and 15 colleagues estimated that 63 percent of U.S. forest land, or about 825 million acres, is at risk of increased damage from established pests, and new pests continue to arrive with cargo shipments from overseas. ... "I think there would be resistance from overseas partners that are shipping a lot of material using these wood pallets," said Frank Lowenstein, deputy director of the New England Forestry Foundation, a conservation group based in Littleton, Massachusetts.

For the Amah Mutsun, an indigenous people of the central coast, the land was never ‘theirs.’ They didn’t think of the land as belonging to anyone. Blessed to live along the central coast and eastward, they belonged to the land. They were tender toward it — and tenders of it. Now, after centuries of cultural upheaval, they’re learning to recover their roles as the land’s stewards. ...

Switzer Fellow and Colorado State University Professor Maria Fernández-Giménez has received the Order of the Polar Star from the government of Mongolia, the highest civilian honor the country presents to foreign nationals. Fernández-Giménez was selected due to her long-standing commitment to researching Mongolia’s extensive rangelands and how natural and human communities are adapting to ecological and economic change.

California Sea Grant is pleased to announce the selection of 12 outstanding doctoral graduate students and postdoctoral researchers as recipients of the 2016 Delta Science Fellowship. Awarded periodically by the Delta Stewardship Council’s Delta Science Program and administered by California Sea Grant, the fellowship partners junior scientists with academic and community mentors to work on collaborative data analysis and research projects applicable to the California Bay-Delta system. ...