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Earlier this year, the School of the Environment launched its Strategic Investment Initiative. The program awarded grants to faculty across campus working on environmental challenges affecting the region and planet. This fall, many of those grants are beginning to bear fruit. That includes the grant awarded to Professor James McNamara in the Department of Geosciences.
McNamara and geosciences Assistant Professor Anna Bergstrom applied for the Strategic Investment Initiative this spring to support an incoming Ph.D. student, who would join a team of researchers working on the Dry Creek Experimental Watershed. The search was a success and Avalon Johnson began in the role this fall semester.
Johnson will join McNamara on an existing interdisciplinary team studying the impact of declining mountain snowpack on groundwater dependent ecosystems using a local hydrological laboratory. The funding support from the School of the Environment Strategic Investment Initiative will help her produce a dissertation in collaboration with ecohydrology experts.
The Dry Creek Experimental Watershed began as a much smaller project in 2000. The addition of Johnson is the latest expansion of this valuable data source in our region.
“People who are developing predictive models need a place with a long-term record to test them out,” McNamara said. The Dry Creek Experimental Watershed provides that record, and not just to Boise State faculty. The data is available to scientists all around the world — the team benefiting from the Strategic Investment Initiative grant includes a researcher from Australia.
The Strategic Investment Initiative grant served as a launchpad for McNamara, Johnson and the team to apply for federal funding to study how changing winter snowpack levels will affect vegetation in riparian zones — those are the thin lines of greenery supported by creeks in gulleys in dry regions. The team has already applied for one external grant and has plans for another. They expect to hear back in the coming months.
In addition to McNamara’s grant, the School of the Environment Strategic Investment Initiative supported 11 other Boise State researchers. Stay tuned for updates on those projects and the ways the School of the Environment supports interdisciplinary environmental research in our region.