CFC faculty receive EPSCoR Interdisciplinary Incubation Grants

Last week the Montana Institute on Ecosystems announced that 16 teams had been awarded incubation grants as part of the new Montana University System-wide EPSCoR grant.  A total of $280,000 was awarded. These grants support research that address environmental science and related topics focused on the dynamics and vulnerabilities of Montana’s ecosystems to climate and land-use change.  Laurie Yung, Cory Cleveland, and Solomon Dobrowski will be part of a project, “Climate change vulnerability and adaptive capacity in Montana”; Cara Nelson joins several colleagues at MSU, SKCC, and the USGS for research on “Drivers of forest structure and function on tribal lands in Montana”; Peter Kolb is part of a project “Tree responses to drought”; Diana Six and two other colleagues are investigating “The genomics of beetle-fungal symbiosis”; Solomon Dobrowski is part of a team looking at “Direct and indirect responses to herbivory in semi-arid ecosystems”;  Mark Hebblewhite and Bob Crabtree have a project entitled, “Landscape systems and environmental change in western Montana”; and Jill Belsky will work with four others on a project “Identifying the factors and interactions that drive agroecosystems over sustainability thresholds.”