Raymond Erskine receives Ecological Society of America Graduate Student Policy Award

by Cindy Landrum, Clemson University
March 25, 2025

Clemson University student Raymond Erskine has been named a 2025 Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award recipient by the Ecological Society of America.

Erskine is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biological Sciences. He is from Ghana.

The award provides graduate students hands-on training and science policy experience including interacting with congressional decision-makers, federal agency officials and ecologists who work in the science and public policy arena.

At Clemson, Erskine studies tree responses to drought, specifically investigating how and why seedlings display different physiological strategies for handling drought stress. 

The broader objective of his work is to understand the impacts of mesophication on forest dynamics in the Southern Appalachian region, especially the forests of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, as drought events intensify due to changes in climate. Mesophication is the process by which forests transition from being open to closed canopies, dominated by shade-tolerant tree species. The process is often caused by reduced fire activity.

Erskine believes that federal support for science, especially plant ecology, has been crucial in addressing urgent environmental challenges in the United States and in his home country.

Keep reading: https://news.clemson.edu/raymond-erskine-receives-ecological-society-of-america-graduate-student-policy-award/