2023
January 23: NRT master's student Bridget McKinley presented a poster, "Determining the Performance of Cover Crop Cultivars Grown as Monocultures and Mixtures," at the Midwest Cover Crop and South Dakota Soil Health Coalition Conference in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She also attended the Practical Farmers of Iowa Annual Conference in Ames, Iowa, on January 19-21, 2023.
February 1: Morgan Hartman and Anna Oetting from the university's Office of Sustainability spoke at the NRT trainee meeting about sustainability efforts on campus and careers in sustainability.
February 15: Chris Helzer, the Director of Science at The Nature Conservancy, spoke at the NRT trainee meeting about using fire and rotational grazing to build resilience in agricultural land.
March 1: John Hay, Nebraska extension educator, spoke to the NRT about solar energy savings and policies.
March 6 to April 28: NRT doctoral student Catherine Chan took part in the Inclusive Teaching Online Course sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
March 23: NRT doctoral student Brandy Williams attended Nebraska Women in STEM's inaugural conference, "Nebraska Women: Strive, Thrive, Empower and Mentor," at the Graduate Hotel in Lincoln. About 250 women attended the in-person conference.
March 28: NRT master's student Katia Carranza spoke on RFD-TV about the relationship between people, the land and industry and about ecology and Indigenous insights she is gaining in her research on that.
March 29: Jerry Hudgins, professor in electrical and computer engineering, spoke to the NRT on wind energy.
April 2-5: NRT master's student Araceli Gomez Villegas took third place in the master's students' ten-minute presentation at the Entomological Society of America Pacific Branch meeting in Seattle, Washington.
April 7: NRT doctoral student Anastasia Madsen defended her dissertation, "Implications of Animal Social Networks for Individuals, Social Communities, and Populations."
April 12: Scott Benson, Manager of Resource and Transmission Planning at Lincoln Electric System, spoke to the NRT about the electric grid, integrated marketplace for electricity and integration of renewables.
April 19: NRT doctoral student Catherine Chan presented on "Influence of Spatial Scale on Estimating Biodiversity Through Remote Sensing" in the School of Natural Resources as part of the spring seminar series.
May 3: Doctoral student Brandy Williams and master's student Araceli Gomez Villegas presented their research at the NRT Annual Review.
May 5: Doctoral student Brandy Williams presented about the broken-wing display of plovers at the School of Biological Sciences graduate student seminar series.
May 10: John Hay, Nebraska extension educator, spoke at the trainee meeting about integrating renewables in a public power state.
2022
January 24: NRT doctoral student Rubi Quiñones presented three times at the 21st Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Environmental Science sponsored by the American Meteorological Society in Houston, Texas. Quiñones spoke about "Advancing Detection of Dynamic Environmental Effects on Plants Using Computer Vision Analytics in High-Throughput Phenotyping Facilities," about "Development of Climatic Spatiotemporal and Analytical Visualization for Maize Response to Climate" and about "Hydroclimate Data Improvement for Extreme-Event Diagnostics in Rwanda Using Random Forest."
February 4 and April 28, 2022: Master’s student Daniel Morales led landowner workshops in the Denton Hills, Nebraska.
February 9 to 11: NRT master's student Katia Carranza and Ronica Stromberg, NRT program coordinator, virtually attended the INFEWS PI Synthesis Workshop at Princeton University. Carranza presented on "Advancing Resilience Through Transdisciplinary Collaboration."
February 18 to March 11: NRT doctoral student Bre Lewis-Jones and master's students Kate Bird and Miyauna Incarnato took part in the Nebraska Science Ambassadors, an experiential learning program focused on science communication and education. They had the chance to help lead the Eight-Legged Encounter Community Event at the Crane Trust in Kearney, Nebraska, and afterschool STEM clubs in Lincoln.
February 22: Doctoral student Rubi Quiñones presented twice at the North American Plant Phenotyping Network Annual Conference in Athens, Georgia. Quiñones spoke about "Accurate Co-Segmentation in High-Throughput and High-Dimensional Plant Image Sequences" and "CoPPNet: A Cosegmentation-Based Deep Learning Network for Accurate Foreground Segmentation in Plant Imagery."
March 2: Master's student Katia Carranza took the database management short course led by Keith Hurley, Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.
March 20-23: Master's student Araceli Gomez Villegas presented a poster, "Pollinator Communities in Central Nebraska Conservation Grasslands and Adjacent Agroecosystems," at the Entomological Society of America North Central Branch meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
March 30: Diana Doan-Crider, project coordinator for the Native American Rangelands Training Initiative and director of the Animo Partnership in Natural Resources, spoke to the NRT about equity for Indigenous people in academia, the influence of her ancestors’ worldviews on her career choices and views, and the incorporation of Indigenous information in range science to make it useful for Indigenous communities.
April 6: NRT professor Lisa Pytlik-Zillig, program coordinator Ronica Stromberg, and students attended the lecture of Walter Echo-Hawk, law professor and Pawnee activist, at the Lied Center. Before the lecture Stromberg and the students ate Cajun food at Buzzard Billy's in the Haymarket.
April 13: Allison Zach, coordinator of the Nebraska Invasive Species Program, spoke to the NRT about invasive species.
April 22: Doctoral student Rubi Quiñones defended her dissertation, "Unsupervised Cosegmentation and Phenotypes for Multimodal, Multiview, and Multistate Imagery."
April 19: Master's student Dominic Cristiano defended his thesis, "An Investigation of the Attitudes and Behavioral Outcomes of Nebraskan Hunters Toward Tick-Borne Disease."
April 27: Diana Doan-Crider, project coordinator for the Native American Rangelands Training Initiative and director of the Animo Partnership in Natural Resources, spoke to the NRT about field safety and safety in academia for all scientists.
May 1: NRT director Craig Allen presented on agricultural resilience at the Earth Day event in Bellevue, Nebraska.
May 13: NRT doctoral student Rubi Quiñones and master's student Dominic Cristiano graduated. Quiñones took a tenure-track professorship in computer science and computer vision at Southern Illinois University--Edwardsville. Cristiano became a research fellow with the Center for Disease Control and ORISE.
May 26: Seven students presented at the NRT annual review in the School of Natural Resources.
June 1: NRT students Cat Chan, Kate Bird, Alexis Chavez and Sarah Thompson presented to the External Advisory Board.
August 2022: Doctoral student Brandy Williams and master's students Jonathan Cronk and Bridget McKinley joined the NRT.
August 12: NRT master's student Alexis Chavez defended his thesis, "Toward Usable Environmental Information: A Case Study with the Santee Sioux Nation," by Zoom.
August 14-19: NRT director Craig Allen and students Katia Carranza and Catherine Chan attended the Ecological Society of America conference in Montreal, Canada.
August 19: NRT doctoral student Katharine Hogan received the 2022 Meritorious Graduate Student award in the School of Natural Resources during the Fall Kickoff.
September 2: NRT master's student Kate Bird defended her thesis, "Landscape Change, Scale, and Human Response to Change in the Great Plains," in the School of Natural Resources.
September 16: NRT master's student Sarah Thompson defended her thesis, "Human and Hydrological Influences on Nebraska’s Endangered Rainwater Basin Wetlands," in the School of Natural Resources.
September 28: NRT doctoral student Lyndsie Wszola defended her dissertation, "People, Fish, and Climate: Life History Evolution in Warming Water," in Manter Hall.
October 10-14: NRT program coordinator Ronica Stromberg and master's student Katia Carranza attended the NRT Annual Meeting in Blacksburg, Virginia.
October 24-27: NRT master's student Sarah Thompson spoke at the Platte River Basin Conference and 3rd Playa Research Symposium in Kearney, Nebraska.
November 16: NRT master's student Daniel Morales defended his thesis, “The Perception of Natural Resource Management in Nebraska: Efforts for Cross-Boundary Collaborative Management,” in the School of Natural Resources.
November 18: NRT director Craig Allen hosted and spoke at a forum, "Innovative Approaches to Enhancing Agricultural Resilience," at the Nebraska Innovation Center. Four NRT students and the NRT coordinator also participated.
November 18: NRT doctoral student Katharine Hogan defended her dissertation, "Different Legacies, Similar Journeys: How Factors Within and Outside Management Control Structure Prairie Restorations and Remnants," in the School of Natural Resources.
November 29: NRT master's student Bridget McKinley attended the Carbon in Agriculture Summit in the Nebraska East Union.
2021
January 28-29: NRT director Craig Allen, program coordinator Ronica Stromberg, and six Nebraska students attended the National Science Foundation NRT annual meeting online. Students attending were Rubi Quiñones, Annie Madsen, Bre Lewis-Jones, Catherine Chan, Kate Bird and Sarah Thompson.
February 15 to 26: NRT members took part in and observed the faculty interview process for a social-ecological rangeland scientist position at the university over eight days.
February 2 to March 3: NRT doctoral student Lyndsie Wszola cotaught a National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) online class about decision support tools using the Shiny application.
March 1: NRT director Craig Allen took over as editor of Ecology and Society.
April 14-15: NRT professor Francisco Muñoz-Arriola, NRT program coordinator Ronica Stromberg and three NRT students took part in the Virtual Tribal Water and Food Sustainability Summit through the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Tribal Extension Office, the Nebraska Water Center, and the Native American Coalition. Students attending were Kate Bird, Katharine Hogan and Sydney James.
April 20: Two graduate students from a Maine NRT met with the Nebraska NRT to discuss ecological and social resilience in communities reliant on tourism and forestry.
April 23 (and starting from October 26, 2020): NRT master's student Kate Bird participated in a National Science Foundation's graduate scholars program, Innovation at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems — Educational Resources.
May 7: NRT civil engineering student Sydney James graduated with a position at Nebraska Accident Reconstruction.
May 17: NRT professor Francisco Muñoz-Arriola led a webinar on the subject of his new book, Environmental Resilience and Transformation in Times of COVID-19: Climate Change Effects on Environmental Functionality, in conjunction with the book launch.
May 18: Andrew Caven, the director of conservation research at the Crane Trust in Nebraska, spoke to the NRT about about research, management challenges and resilience in the Central Platte River Valley.
May 21: Gwendwr Meredith, the newly hired social-ecological rangeland scientist in the Center for Resilience in Agricultural Working Landscapes, visited the School of Natural Resources to meet and mingle with other university employees. NRT director Craig Allen also serves as director of the resilience center.
May 24-28: NRT director Craig Allen cotaught an international course, "Global Perspectives on Resilience," to 30 students from around the world. Nebraska NRT students Kate Bird and Alexis Chavez took the course, offered through the Resilience Alliance, an international organization.
June 1: NRT students Dominic Cristiano, Annie Madsen, Daniel Morales, Rubi Quiñones and Lyndsie Wszola presented their research to the Nebraska NRT External Advisory Board.
June 8: NRT students Kate Bird, Catherine Chan, Alexis Chavez, Dominic Cristiano, Bre Lewis-Jones, Annie Madsen, Daniel Morales, Rubi Quiñones, Sarah Thompson and Lyndsie Wszola presented the progress on their research at the NRT annual review.
July 29: John Chick, principal scientist and field station director at the Illinois Natural History Survey, spoke to the NRT about river ecology.
August: Doctoral student Catherine Chan took part in Husker Dialogues with new students to foster understanding of differences and welcome all to campus.
August 1: Students Katia Carranza, Araceli Gomez Villegas and Miyauna Incarnato joined the NRT as master's students.
August 9-13: Lance Gunderson, international expert on adaptive management, taught the "Adaptive Management" short course at the Nebraska NRT in conjunction with an annual retreat and social activities at the Niobrara Preserve.
August 13: NRT student Daniel Rico graduated with his master's degree in Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering. He continued on at Nebraska for his doctoral degree.
September 1: NRT students Kate Bird and Daniel Morales took part in the IANR Graduate Student Science Communication Workshop.
September 18-19: NRT students Kate Bird and Rubi Quiñones presented at the virtual Midwest Women in Science Conference. Bird received an honorable mention for best talk for her presentation on the importance of scale in evaluating landscape connectivity.
September 21: The university honored Craig Allen, NRT director, as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society, at the Laurels award ceremony.
September 28: NRT director Craig Allen spoke about the Network for Integrated Agricultural Resilience Research in relation to sustainable food and water security at the university's Grand Challenges luncheon. A team headed by Allen and Tala Awada, associate dean of the Agricultural Research Division, recently received a four-year, $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to establish the network, the first collaboration of its kind in the field. The network unites the Long-Term Agroecosystem Research Network, the Agriculture Canada Living Labs Initiative and ResNet in Canada, and the international Resilience Alliance organization. The team will use an additional $150,000 of funding from the University of Nebraska’s Collaboration Initiative program to include partners in Mexico in the network.
October 11: Anthony Schutz, professor in the Nebraska College of Law, presented an overview of water law in Nebraska to the NRT.
October 13: NRT director Craig Allen and Walt Schacht, emeritus agronomy professor, spoke on the Great Plains Anywhere podcast about the resilience of rangelands.
October 18-20: NRT students Conor Barnes, Kate Bird, Alison Ludwig and Daniel Morales presented virtually at the 2021 Nebraska Natural Legacy Conference.
November 8: Kevin Bales, professor of contemporary slavery and research director of The Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, spoke to the NRT about modern-day slavery and its connection to climate change.
November 16-17: NRT students attended the Resilience Alliance online symposium.
November 22: Dessalegn Ejigu Berhane, biology professor at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia, spoke to the NRT about his work with the endangered Wahlia Ibex.
November 29: NRT student Alison Ludwig defended her master's thesis, "Restoration with Fire in Alternative Grassland-Juniper Woodland States: Studies on an Endangered Species, Plant Diversity, and Soil Properties."
November 30: NRT student Julie Fowler defended her master's thesis, "Soil Microbial Community Dynamics in Response to Prescribed Extreme Burns of Juniperus Virginiana Invasive to the Loess Canyons of Nebraska."
December 6: The NRT celebrated the end of the year with a pizza party.
December 17: NRT master's students Julie Fowler and Alison Ludwig graduated. Fowler continued for her doctoral education, and Ludwig continued in a researcher position at the university.
2020
January 14-16: Elena Bennett, professor of Natural Resource Sciences at McGill University in Canada, delivered the Heuermann Lecture to about 150 people at the Nebraska Innovation Campus on January 14. She met with the NRT students and program coordinator for informal discussions on January 15-16 and had lunch with smaller groups of professors and students during the week.
February 25: NRT agronomy professor Dirac Twidwell spoke on an RFD-TV news segment about current research on the eastern red cedar invading grasslands.
February 26: Erin Omar, Office of Graduate Studies, presented to NRT students on "How to Conduct a Successful Job Search" and Ryan Fette, Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance, presented on "Title IX: Introduction to Federal Law Prohibiting Discrimination Based on Sex."
March 4: Erin Omar from the Office of Graduate Studies presented on "Power Skills for Professional Success" and provided students with a self-analysis to conduct on five soft skills in high demand in the workforce. Cheryl Horst and Arpi Siyanhian from NUtech Ventures spoke about "Intellectual Property: What It Is and How to Protect Yours" and spoke about intern opportunities at NUtech Ventures.
April 3: James Rattling Leaf, Sr., presented "Developing Cultural Intelligence for a Changing World: An American Indian Perspective" and took questions from the School of Natural Resources and NRT.
April 14-15: Although the university's Spring Research Fair was canceled due to COVID-19, accepted posters were loaded to the digital commons, including Alison Ludwig's poster and Daniel Rico's poster.
April 20-June 8: The Nebraska NRT worked with Northwestern University to offer the Science Communication Online Programme (SCOPE) to NRT students here jointly with Illinois students.
May: NRT student Julie Fowler won the 2020 School of Natural Resources Masters Meritorious Graduate Student Award for outstanding performance in research, professional contributions and leadership.
May: Four NRT master's students defended, the first in our NRT: Jazmin Castillo, Christopher Fill, Jessica Johnson and Brittany Kirsch. Castillo and Johnson graduated in May, and Fill and Kirsch officially graduated in August. Johnson and Kirsch had already landed jobs with the NRCS before graduating.
May 26: NRT master's student Alison Ludwig was awarded a Sampson Fellowship with the Center for Grassland Studies, as announced by the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture.
May 27: Laurel Badura, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, spoke to NRT students about federal jobs and shared tips for preparing and applying for such positions.
June 24: Andrea Basche, assistant professor in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, spoke by Zoom to NRT students about federal fellowships and how to apply for them.
June 30: Master's students Julie Fowler and Alison Ludwig presented virtually about NRT collaborations in which they are involved to the External Advisory Board of the Nebraska NRT at the board's annual meeting.
July 12: The eight NRT students in the Council for Resilience Education won an Educational Aids Blue Ribbon from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers for their educational materials about ecological resilience. NRT students Conor Barnes, Dominic Cristiano, Julie Fowler, Katharine Hogan, Jessica Johnson, Alison Ludwig, Daniel Morales, and Rubi Quiñones received the award virtually at the ASABE international meeting. The Educational Aids Blue Ribbon Awards Competition promotes excellence in informational materials contributing to the understanding of agricultural and biological engineering subjects outside of the traditional classroom setting.
August 1: The NRT admitted Catherine Chan and Breanne Lewis-Jones as doctoral students and Kate Bird, Alexis Chavez and Sarah Thompson as master's students for fall 2020.
August 3-7: NRT professor Francisco Muñoz-Arriola and Thiago Romanelli, professor at Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, taught the minicourse "Decision-Making and Attribution Science of Socio(agro)ecological Systems” to NRT and Brazilian graduate students.
August 11: The NRT kicked off the new school year with a meet-and-greet by Zoom to welcome our five new students and new NRT professor Lisa Pytlik-Zillig.
September 30: Nick Brozović, Director of Policy at the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute and professor of agricultural economics, visited the NRT virtually to give students an insider glimpse of the important work the institute and the Nebraska Water Center are doing in Nebraska and internationally.
October: Master's student Sydney James was selected as the Student of the Year out of all candidates from the nine universities in Region VII of the Mid-America Transportation Center (University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Omaha and the Medical Center; University of Iowa; University of Kansas and the Medical Center; Northeast Iowa Community College; Missouri University of Science and Technology; and Lincoln University). At a virtual awards banquet during the Council of University Transportation Centers event in January, she and 39 other Student of the Year winners nationwide received recognition.
October 1: NRT professors Craig Allen, Francisco Muñoz-Arriola and Leen-Kiat Soh and the program coordinator, Ronica Stromberg, attended the Alcorn State University Virtual Graduate and Professional Career Fair and enjoyed the chance to speak with prospective graduate students in the many STEM disciplines from which the Nebraska NRT conducts research on ecological resilience.
October 20: Students taking the "Foundations of Ecological Resilience" class performed speed talks about their resilience research at the International Science Meeting of the Resilience Alliance. Eleven students from Nebraska presented (10 NRT-funded students and graduate student Penny Greer), along with graduate students from Michigan State University. The 10 NRT students presenting came from the third and fourth cohorts of the program: Kate Bird, Catherine Chan, Alexis Chavez, Dominic Cristiano, Sydney James, Breanne Lewis-Jones, Annie Madsen, Daniel Morales, Rubi Quiñones, and Sarah Thompson.
October 28: Ellis Adjei Adams, assistant professor of geography and environmental policy in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, spoke to the NRT about water issues and community governance in Africa.
November 2: NRT agronomy professor Dirac Twidwell spoke about "Putting Monitoring into Practice: Strategies for Large-Scale Conservation" at the Fall Seminar Series of the Center for Grassland Studies.
November 11: Igor Linkov, Senior Data Analyst working in COVID Response Detail at FEMA and Senior Scientific Technology Manager in the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, spoke to the NRT about risk, resilience, COVID-19, transportation networks and internships with the Army Corps of Engineers.
December 2-4: NRT agronomy professor Dirac Twidwell received the Nebraska Range and Conservation Endowment award and grant during the 2020 Nebraska Cattlemen Annual Convention.
December 7: NRT doctoral student Conor Barnes spoke on "Legislation in Invasive Species Management" at the Center for Grassland Studies.
December 9: Robin Craig, an environmental law scholar at the University of Utah, spoke to the NRT about law and policy, especially as it relates to water.
2019
January: Biological sciences doctoral student Lyndsie Wszola published a paper, "Simulating detection-censored movement records for home range analysis planning," in the January 24, 2019, issue of Ecological Modelling.
January to April: Students attended various seminar series--of the School of Natural Resources, the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, the School of Biological Sciences, and the Computer Science and Engineering Department. The seminars allowed students to hear from and interact with experts in related professions.
February 10-14: Natural resources doctoral student Conor Barnes presented the poster, "Navigating Rigidity Traps at the Nexus of Law, Policy and Science to Foster Resilient Rangelands," and agronomy master's student Alison Ludwig presented the poster, "Landscape Changes, Land Management, and the Endangered American Burying Beetle in Nebraska," at the Society for Range Management Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. NRT director Craig Allen gave a plenary presentation, "Resilience: Nonstationarity and Thresholds in Rangelands," and NRT professor Dirac Twidwell presented "Large Scale Resilience Planning" as part of the symposium "Harnessing Technology to Improve Conservation Effectiveness on Western Working Lands."
February: Master's student Jazmin Castillo cofounded the Latins for Natural Resources organization.
March: Biological sciences doctoral student Lyndsie Wszola had a paper, "Estimating the use of public lands: Integrated modeling of open populations with convolution likelihood ecological abundance regression," published in Bayesian Analysis.
March: Biological systems engineering doctoral student Manas Khan and NRT professor Francisco Munoz-Arriola had a paper, "Spatial heterogeneity of temporal shifts in extreme precipitation across India," published in the March 2019 issue of Journal of Climate Change.
March 8: At the awards luncheon of the College of Agricultural Sciences and School of Natural Resources, Daniel Rico won CASNR's Outstanding Graduate Student Award.
March: Master's student Daniel Rico was elected a senator in the Graduate College, one of six senators representing graduate students for a one-year term.
March 14: Doctoral students Conor Barnes, Katharine Hogan and Lyndsie Wszola attended the "Grant Proposal Writing: Getting Started" workshop on campus.
March 21: Students Conor Barnes, Jazmin Castillo, Christopher Fill, Katharine Hogan and Brittany Kirsch attended the Agricultural and Water Law Seminar, in the auditorium of the College of Law. Speakers addressed agricultural law topics, including legal issues associated with water, the environment, land use, technology, taxation and finance.
March 25: Master's student Jessie Johnson attended the THREDDS Data Server workshop to learn how to access High Plains Regional Climate Center Data for her master's project. THREDDS allows users to access real-time data on the environment.
April: Doctoral student Lyndsie Wszola received an honorable mention for the Best Young Researcher Award from the International Society for Ecological Modeling.
April 15: Students Conor Barnes, Brittany Kirsch, Alison Ludwig and Daniel Rico presented posters at the university's spring research fair.
April 16: Professor Francisco Munoz-Arriola and student Katharine Hogan spoke about the NRT on a panel, "Innovative STEM Graduate Programs at UNL," 11:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. in the Willa Cather Dining Complex. The panel was part of a day-long meeting with members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine who visited the university to discuss "Graduate STEM Education for the 21st Century."
April 20: Professor Francisco Munoz-Arriola and students Jazmin Castillo and Daniel Rico attended the Mexican American Student Association annual banquet on campus.
April 22: Doctoral students Conor Barnes and Katharine Hogan were appointed to the newly formed Chancellor's Environment, Sustainability and Resilience Commission. Barnes is serving on the Natural Resources team and Hogan is serving on the Teaching and Learning team. CESRC advises the chancellor about campus sustainability initiatives, resilient infrastructures and socially responsible economic practices.
April 24: Students Jazmin Castillo and Katharine Hogan attended the kickoff of a new lecture series by the Association for Women in Science on campus. The series is designed to promote STEM diversity and allow campus community members to hear from university women about their paths to success.
April 29 and 30: Master's student Daniel Rico presented "Power-Tethered UAS Network for Indefinite Data Acquisition to Increase Agricultural Resilience in the Platte River Basin" at the 2019 Water for Food Global Conference.
May: Master's student Jazmin Castillo won the Meritorious Graduate Student Award in the School of Natural Resources and was appointed chair of the Council of Students on the Chancellor's Commission on the Status of Women.
May: Doctoral student Lyndsie Wszola was listed as the first author on an article, "Prey availability and accessibility drive hunter movement," published May 13 in Wildlife Biology.
May 1: Master's student Daniel Rico placed in the top five in the 2019 Engineering Graduate Poster Competition. He won a $500 conference travel fellowship from the College of Engineering and was recognized at the 2019 Graduate Recognition event in the Nebraska Union's Regency Suite.
May 12-16: Five students and professors Craig Allen and Dirac Twidwell attended the Resilience Alliance annual meeting near Atlanta, Georgia.
May 16 to June 6: Nine NRT students and professor Francisco Muñoz-Arriola traveled to The Netherlands, Spain and France to compare water structures there with those in Nebraska.
June 28: The NRT External Advisory Board met for its annual meeting, and trainees presented their research to members of the board.
July: Master's student Daniel Morales received news that Journal of Insect Physiology published a paper he cowrote, "Sex and life history shape the strength of cellular and humoral immune responses in a wing dimorphic cricket."
July 7-10: Professor Francisco Muñoz-Arriola and master's student Daniel Rico attended the ASABE Annual International Meeting in Boston. Rico presented a poster, "Power-Tethered UAS Network for Indefinite Data Acquisition to Increase Agricultural Resilience in the Platte River Basin," at the meeting.
August 1: Doctoral student Katharine Hogan began a two-year appointment as a graduate fellow at the Center for Great Plains Studies.
August 1: Five students began work with the NRT for the 2019-2020 school year: Dominic Cristiano, master's student, School of Natural Resources; Sydney James, master's student, Department of Civil Engineering; Anastasia Madsen, doctoral student, School of Biological Sciences; Daniel Morales, master's student, School of Natural Resources; and Rubi Quiñones, doctoral student, Computer Science and Engineering Department.
August 7-8: NRT professor Leen-Kiat Soh, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, instructed eight NRT students in the new minicourse, "Multiagent Simulation for Complex Systems."
August 13: Master's student Alison Ludwig spoke about her research on Nebraska's endangered American Burying Beetle with KVRN radio station on its news program.
August 22: KHGI NTV's "Good Life" featured Christopher Fill's research at Homestead National Monument in a segment, "Endangered Species of Bats in Nebraska."
August 23: The Beatrice Daily Sun featured master's student Christopher Fill and his bat research in an article.
September 6: Master's student Daniel Rico spoke with about 200 students at the Academy of Engineering & Technology at Grand Island Senior High School about "Daring to Dream." Rico addressed overcoming adversity and pursuing and protecting one’s dreams.
September 17: NRT students Christopher Fill and Katharine Hogan presented their research at the annual meeting of the Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the Champions Club. Two other NRT students, an NRT professor and the program coordinator attended.
September 20-21: Students Jazmin Castillo, Julie Fowler, Katharine Hogan and Jessie Johnson took the American Geophysical Union's minicourse "Communicating Science Effectively to Any Audience" at the University of Montana.
September 25-27: Public policy professor Nancy Shank and six students attended the annual meeting of the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The students presented a poster, "Resilience Converges."
October 2: Molly Nance, public relations director of the Daughtery Water for Food Institute, spoke to NRT students about “Managing Media (or How to Be a Research Rock Star).” She shared tips and showed filmed examples of how students can make the most of on-camera interviews.
October 9-10: Professors Craig Allen and Dirac Twidwell and students Conor Barnes, Alison Ludwig and Daniel Morales attended the Nebraska Natural Legacy Conference in Gering, Nebraska. The professors and Barnes and Ludwig presented at the conference, which focused on natural resource management, biodiversity, citizen science, environmental education and conservation issues.
October 16: Shawna Richter-Ryerson, university communications professional, and Ronica Stromberg, program coordinator, provided students instruction on communicating professionally through social media.
October 16-18: Civil engineering student Sydney James served on a panel, "Native People and Your Success," at the Mid-America Transportation Center Scholars Program. She and other Native leaders networked with and advised Native scholars seeking to transition from two-year tribal colleges to a four-year university such as Nebraska.
October 18-19: Master's student Brittany Kirsch won "Best Graduate Poster Presentation" at the Great Plains Limnology Conference at Iowa State University. She presented on "Making It Rain: Using Rainfall Simulators to Investigate Land Use Effect on Runoff Composition."
October 23: Master's student Sydney James attended the American Council of Engineering Companies -- Nebraska Department of Transportation Partnership Workshop.
November 10-13: Agronomy master's student Brittany Kirsch presented a poster, "Impact of Agricultural Land Use and Weather on Water Quality,” during the Tri-Societies Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas. About 4,000 scientists, professionals, educators and students attended this joint international meeting of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and Soil Science Society of America.
November 13: Kristal Stoner, executive director of Audubon Nebraska and former Nebraska Game and Parks Commission wildlife diversity program manager, presented "Audubon Nebraska: Spreading Wings in a Changing World" at an NRT meeting. She spoke with students about declining bird populations, the risks birds face today and the importance that the students' NRT research may play in advocating for birds.
November 25: NRT director Craig Allen, NRT professor Andrea Basche and Michael Forsberg from the Platte Basin Timelapse delivered the Heuermann lecture, "Nebraska: An Ecosystem in Harmony," at the Nebraska Innovation Campus auditorium. Afterward, all three received Heuermann medals, and participants watched the "Follow the Water" documentary while eating dinner together.
December 10: Agronomy master's student Alison Ludwig gave a lightning talk and presented a poster, "Prescribed Fire as a Land Management Tool for the Endangered American Burying Beetle," at the 2019 Nebraska Prescribed Fire Conference in Kearney, Nebraska. School of Natural Resources doctoral student Conor Barnes also gave a lightning talk.
December 11: Nebraska College of Law professor Anthony Schutz led a roundtable discussion about environmental law with NRT professors and students.
2018
January 3: The NRT at Nebraska started with five students: Conor Barnes, Jazmin Castillo, Christopher Fill, Katharine Hogan and Daniel Rico.
March 3-9: Brian Chaffin, University of Montana, visited the NRT to collaborate with professors and further students' understanding of governance.
March 8-May 8: David Angeler, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, visited the NRT to collaborate with professors and further students' understanding of community ecology and adaptive capacity.
March 18-29: Ahjond Garmestani, Environmental Protection Agency, visited the NRT to collaborate with professors and further students' understanding of environmental law and policy.
March 20-21: Students Conor Barnes and Daniel Rico attended the Adaptive Management Conference at the university.
March 22: David Angeler, Ahjond Garmestani and NRT professors, students and the program coordinator took a field trip to the Platte River to view the Sandhill Crane migration.
April 10-11: Student Conor Barnes presented on “Legal Challenges and Opportunities to Manage Grasslands for Resilience” at the Great Plains Grasslands Summit Conference in Denver, Colorado.
April 18-20: Students Conor Barnes and Jazmin Castillo attended the Great Plains Ecotourism Conference in Kearney, Nebraska.
May 22-June 5: Along with graduate students from the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, NRT students Conor Barnes, Christopher Fill, Katharine Hogan and Daniel Rico toured Nebraska water structures and sites, touring facilities, meeting leaders, performing lab work, analyzing data and writing reports.
May 22-June 5: Master's student Jazmin Castillo toured water structures in Botswana, Africa. Later, she presented her findings to the rest of the NRT.
June 10-13: Students Conor Barnes, Christopher Fill, Katharine Hogan and Daniel Rico instructed middle school students on topics such as rockets, drones, snakes, alligators, and other wildlife at the Science Education Partnership Award summer camp at the university.
June 14-18: Master's student Christopher Fill attended an Acoustic Techniques and Analysis course in Gainesville, Virginia, for his bat detection research.
July 31-August 1: The NRT professors, students, and program coordinator attended the INFEWS Workshop in Missoula, Montana.
August 1: The NRT admitted its second cohort of students: Julie Fowler, Jessica Johnson, Brittany Kirsch and Lyndsie Wszola. Soon, graduate students Alison Ludwig, Manas Khan and Taylor Smith began collaborations with the group.
August 6-December 12: David Angeler, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, visited the NRT to collaborate with professors and further students' understanding of community ecology and adaptive capacity.
August 14-17: Lance Gunderson, professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at Emory University, instructed a short course on adaptive management to NRT students and other interested graduate students.
August 20-December 14: All NRT students took the Foundations of Resilience course taught by NRT professors Craig Allen and Dirac Twidwell.
September 5-6: Seven NRT students attended the Environmental Conflict Management short course with Chris Moore, an international expert on the topic.
September 17-23: Professor Brian Chaffin and doctoral student Kristen Sleeper, both from the University of Montana, visited the NRT to collaborate with professors and students on law and policy.
September 21: Master's student Daniel Rico presented a poster, “Power-Tethered UAS Network for Indefinite Data Acquisition to Increase Agricultural Resilience in the Platte River Basin," and doctoral student Manas Khan presented a poster "Assessment of Hydrologic Regime Shifts at Basin Scale over the Contiguous United States," at the Midwest Big Data Hub Digital Agriculture Conference at the university.
September 27-28: Students Daniel Rico and Conor Barnes presented a poster, “Technologic Development and Policy Studies for Resilient FEWES Systems," at the NRT Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.
October 2: Master's student Christopher Fill presented on "Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Bat Activity in Nebraska Agricultural Landscapes" and doctoral student Katharine Hogan presented on "Seasonal Pollinator Resources in Restored Grasslands" at the annual meeting of the Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the university.
October 5-6: Master's student Brittany Kirsch presented a poster, "Performance of Nitrate-N Removal in a Small, Field-Scale Wetland," at the Great Plains Limnology Conference at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.
October 24-25: Master's student Daniel Rico presented a poster, "Power-Tethered UAS Network for Indefinite Data Acquisition to Increase Agricultural Resilience in the Platte River Basin,” and doctoral student Manas Khan presented a poster, "Assessment of Hydrologic Regime Shifts at Basin Scale over the Contiguous United States," at the Water Resources of the U.S. Great Plains Region: Status and Future regional symposium of the National Institutes for Water Resources at the Nebraska Innovation Campus in Lincoln.
October 29-November 4: Ahjond Garmestani, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, visited the NRT to collaborate with professors and discuss current issues with students.
November 7-13: Robin Craig, professor in the University of Utah S. J. Quinney College of Law, visited the NRT for discussions and collaborations regarding environmental law and policy.
December 6: Professor Dirac Twidwell and students Conor Barnes, Julie Fowler and Alison Ludwig presented "Advancing Fire Ecology of the Great Plains" at the 6th Annual Nebraska Prescribed Fire Conference in Kearney.
Collaborating agencies
