Research Experience for Undergraduates Site on Sustainable Land and Water Resources

University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis MN

Investigators

Abstract

Global climate change and associated impacts on our national inland waters have led to new pressures for better land and water resource management. This is true to an even greater extent on native reservations, which deal with complicated resource management issues and lack young native scientists to meet current needs. A better understanding of biological, chemical, ecological and physical processes is needed to form a solid foundation for predictive approaches to resource management. The Research Experience for Undergraduates Site on Sustainable Land and Water Resources will engage 14 undergraduate students per year for three years in the key elements of sustainable land and water resources research that are essential to improving management practices. Resource management is interdisciplinary in nature requiring knowledge of biological, chemical, ecological and physical processes that continuously shape and alter the Earth's near-surface environment. Improving resource management practices is socially relevant and of acknowledged national importance. Students in this REU program will be engaged in research projects that have immediate social relevance to US communities, including native reservations. Students will work on one of three teams on projects that integrate Earth-surface dynamics, ecology, geology, hydrology, neolimnology (study of inland waters) and paleolimnology principles and techniques. The program takes an interdisciplinary team-oriented approach that emphasizes quantitative and predictive methods. One team will focus on an experimental approach to one of two problems at St. Anthony Falls Laboratory: (1) improving stream restoration practices for ecosystem health and fish habitat or (2) debris flow hazards; one team will examine the effects of surface water management practice on groundwater resources in Montana; and one team will investigate past and present habitat conditions of wild rice lakes in northern Minnesota. An All-Team Gathering at the conclusion of the program will expose all students to an ethics program that considers student research in the context of the community and students will present their research to a large group of faculty and students.