The AUNE Center for Tropical Ecology and Conservation (CTEC) in the Department of Environmental Studies has issued grants totaling $3,400 to help support students in their capstone projects. Four students were awarded funds this year, supporting conservation work in the neotropics and in Africa, in biodiversity hotspots, and in tropical forests, agricultural systems, and aquatic systems. Projects include working with community members, citizen scientists, birds, and trees. CTEC funding will contribute to tropical forest regeneration, food security, improved water quality, and more effective protected areas management.
The awards were granted to:
- Nicole Wengerd for her dissertation research in Tanzania on a new approach to support local stakeholder participation in protected area planning and management, using participatory methods from asset-based community development and biocultural diversity, including asset and biocultural mapping.
- Katie Kibler for pilot work on dissertation research in Rwanda to explore agro-ecologically intensified Rwandan shade coffee for agro-ecosystem-level biodiversity and food security using an indigenous co-research framework.
- Phoebe Gooding for her master’s project in Mexico to study community water quality monitoring in the Amanalco Basin of Valle de Bravo, using citizen science.
- Dianne Dubois for her master’s thesis research in Costa Rica on the effect of slope and edaphic qualities on seedling survivorship in abandoned pastureland on the Pacific slope of Costa Rica.
