2007 NREL Scholarships Award Winners

Congratulations to the 2007-2008 Francis Clark Soil Biology and James E. Ellis Memorial Graduate Scholarship Recipients!

Francis Clark Soil Biology Scholarship Recipients-

Eliana Bontti
Project: Nitrous oxide emissions from fungal and bacterial activity after a pulse of water in the short grass steppe
Advisors: Indy Burke, Mary Stromberger, Bill Lauenroth

William Smith
Project: Influence of UV-B radiation and soil moisture on the decomposition of Aspen Populus tremuloides letter: a characterization of the litter microbial community
Advisors: Wei Gao, Matthew Wallenstein, Heidi Steltzer

James E. Ellis Memorial Scholarship Recipients-

Gabriela Bucini
Project: Mapping and Modeling Tree Cover in Kruger National Park, South Africa
Advisors: Niall Hanan, Michael Lefsky, Jayashree Ratnam

Stacy Lynn
Project: Economic Impact of land use change on Maasai livelihoods, the impact of land use change on migratory wildlife species, quantifying livestock movement across the pastoral landscape for forage and water-investigating the potential impacts of increasing cultivation on these movement patters and access to resources.
Advisors: Mike Coughenour, Maria Fernandez-Giminez, Dave Swift

Please take a moment to congratulate our 2007-2008 scholarship recipients.

Thank you to the mentors and the scholarship committee for contributing to the continued success of our future scientists.

About the Scholarships:

The Francis Clark Soil Biology Scholarship is presented to undergraduates and graduate students who have the potential to become an outstanding scientist in soil biology. Soil Biology was construed, according to Dr. Clark, as “inclusive of soil microbiology, biochemistry, biogeochemistry, nutrient cycling, molecular microbiology and the impact of soil organisms on ecosystem functioning and the global environment, from the gene to global scale.”

Francis Clark (1910-2007) was a former USDA scientist who worked with NREL scientists during the grasslands days (and later), and co authored with Eldor Paul, the famous Paul & Clark, Soil Microbiology and Biochemistry, 1996, 1989, Academic Press. He was very much involved today in NREL, and we appreciate the value he placed on NREL’s contributions for the future.

The James E. Ellis Memorial Graduate Scholarship was established through the kind donations of many individuals to honor the memory of Dr. Ellis, advance knowledge of ecosystems and the humans that rely upon them, and to support students of NREL. The scholarship is awarded to full-time graduate students whose major professor is affiliated with an NREL-based research project. Students should be working on, or strive to work on, research on the relationships between humans and the environment.

James Ellis (1938-2002) was an ecosystem scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL) of Colorado State University for more than 30 years. Dr. Ellis/ preeminent work on understanding the interplay between people and natural processes in arid ecosystems set a global standard for novel research spanning scientific disciplines. He applied integrated, interdisciplinary approaches to understanding pastoral ecosystem ecology throughout the world. Dr. Ellis was a systems ecologist in the classical sense-his greatest strength was his ability to conceptualize large, complex scientific problems as whole systems, to sketch the interactions among their significant components, and to develop ways to understand their dynamics. He mentored many students, several of whom are now international leaders in ecosystem science and ecology.