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Special Policy News 9: The Transition

We are keeping you up-to-date on the appropriations process with a new Federal Budget Tracker for FY 2018. We are also continuing to update our Federal Agency Transition Tracker. In This Issue: Budget Blueprint Slashes Non-Defense Discretionary Budgets Hiring freeze, agency reorganizations, and budget blueprint cause concern in scientific community House Science Committee Seeks to Prioritize Basic Physical Sciences Research NSF…

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Jianguo ‘Jack’ Liu visits Wolong Nature Reserve for giant pandas (Sichuan Province, China) in 2013. Dr. Liu is the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability and director of the Michigan State University Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability. He and his collaborators have been working on pandas and people for more than two decades and have contributed to the panda recovery that led to its recent removal from the endangered species list. Credit: Sue Nichols

ESA honors Jianguo Liu and colleagues with the 2017 Sustainability Science Award for their review of systems integration for global sustainability

The Sustainability Science Award recognizes the authors of the scholarly work that makes the greatest contribution to the emerging science of ecosystem and regional sustainability through the integration of ecological and social sciences. ESA recognizes Jianguo Liu, Harold Mooney, Vanessa Hull, Steven J. Davis, Joanne Gaskell, Thomas Hertel, Jane Lubchenco, Karen C. Seto, Peter Gleick, Claire Kremen, and Shuxin Li with…

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ESA endorses the March for Science

RSVP if you plan on participating in the March for Science in Washington, D.C. or in another city. ESA, the largest society of ecologists in the world, endorses the nonpartisan March for Science. The Society joins over 28 organizations and scientific societies in supporting the mission of the March to publicly communicate science as a pillar of human freedom and…

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Gillian Bowser samples pollinators with students in the 3dNaturalists program during the National Park Service’s Centennial Bioblitz in Bandelier National Park, in 2016. Students worked in “pollinator hotshot teams” to identify pollinators and upload photos and information to an online database using a citizen science app called iNaturalist. Credit: Carrie Lederer

ESA honors Gillian Bowser for her Commitment to Human Diversity in Ecology

The Ecological Society of America’s Commitment to Human Diversity in Ecology Award recognizes long-standing contributions of an individual towards increasing the diversity of future ecologists through mentoring, teaching, or outreach. Gillian Bowser, a research scientist in the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL) and affiliated faculty with The Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and Department of Ethnic Studies at Colorado…

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Special Policy News 8: The Transition

We are keeping you up-to-date with a Federal Agency Transition Tracker. In This Issue: Transition Update Trump addresses Congress and signs two STEM bills Bipartisan bills promote women in STEM Executive Orders Waters of the U.S. Rule Foreign Travel and Immigration Department of the Interior – Zinke takes the reins Greeted by documents requests, signs two secretarial orders Department of Energy…

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Andrew Trant. Photo credit: Emily Urquhart.

Andrew Trant and colleagues win 2017 Cooper Award for uncovering the historical influence of a First Nations people on forest productivity

The Cooper Award honors the authors of an outstanding publication in the field of geobotany, physiographic ecology, plant succession or the distribution of plants along environmental gradients. William S. Cooper was a pioneer of physiographic ecology and geobotany, with a particular interest in the influence of historical factors, such as glaciations and climate history, on the pattern of contemporary plant…

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Debra Peters honored for her Distinguished Service to ESA and ecology

The Distinguished Service Citation recognizes long and distinguished volunteer service to ESA, the scientific community, and the larger purpose of ecology in the public welfare. Debra Peters is the founding editor-in-chief of ESA’s newest journal, Ecosphere, created in 2010 to offer a rapid path to publication for research reports from across the spectrum of ecological science, including interdisciplinary studies that…

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Kathie Weathers

Kathleen Weathers receives ESA’s 2017 Eugene P. Odum Award for Excellence in Ecology Education

Odum Award recipients demonstrate their ability to relate basic ecological principles to human affairs through teaching, outreach, and mentoring activities. Kathleen Weathers is a senior scientist and the G.Evelyn Hutchinson Chair of Ecology at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., where she focuses on freshwater ecosystems. For more than a decade, she has been dedicated to advancing bottom-up…

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The Ecological Society of America's 2017 Eminent Ecologist, Diana Wall, takes a break from sampling soil biodiversity along an elevational transect as part of the McMurdo Dry Valley LTER project in Miers Valley, Antarctica (78°5.326 S, 163°46.382 E), in January 2013. Photo credit: Martijn Vandegehuchte

Diana Harrison Wall named 2017 ESA Eminent Ecologist

The Eminent Ecologist Award honors a senior ecologist for an outstanding body of ecological work or sustained ecological contributions of extraordinary merit. Soil ecologist Diana Wall, the founding director of the Colorado State University’s School of Global Environmental Sustainability, is world-renowned for uncovering the importance of below-ground processes. Best known for her outstanding quarter century of research in the McMurdo…

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Under the Yoke (Burning the Brushwood), 1893 (oil on canvas) by Jarnefelt, Eero Nikolai (1863-1937); 131x164 cm; Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki, Finland.

Fire-scarred trees record 700 years of natural and cultural fire history in a northern forest

A new paper in Ecological Monographs presents a 700-year dendrochronological record of fire in Trillemarka-Rollagsfjell nature preserve in southern Norway. Burn scars on old tree stumps chronicle social change, from the population crash at the time of the bubonic plague, through a spike in slash-and-burn agriculture, to the rise of the timber economy.     Until the modern era, the human mark…

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