Dyson College of Arts and Sciences
Issue link: http://dysoncollege.uberflip.com/i/1039880
DCISE Annual Report 2017-2018 INTRAMURAL AND EXTRAMURAL FUNDING Pocantico River Watershed Habitat Assessment (continuation) Funding Source: New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Investigator: Michael Rubbo Synopsis: Pace is continuing to identify and assess the habitats found throughout the Pocantico River Watershed. This information will ultimately be used to identify priority areas for conservation within the watershed and to direct management plans. Pace students Angelica Arocho '22, Environmental Studies, and Morgan Kelly '18, MS in Environmental Science, spent the summer visiting habitats throughout the watershed to field-verify their status and determine their condition. Over 2,000 acres have been assessed to date. A habitat map of the watershed is currently being developed by Angelica and Morgan to display this information. ABI Innovation: Wallace: A Flexible Platform for Reproducible Modeling of Species Niches and Distributions Built for Community Expansion Funding Source: National Science Foundation ($593,000) Co-Principal Investigator: Matthew Aiello-Lammens Synopsis: This project focuses on developing software tools for studying species distributions. These tools should lead to better estimates of species ranges, which are important to interests as diverse as conservation biology, the study of invasive species, and diseases passed to humans from insects and wildlife. The project will train graduate and undergraduate students at Pace University, City University of New York, and Yale University. Pace hosted the full research group (pictured below) for a three- day meeting and hack-a-thon this past June, and the team continues to make strides in rendering these models and tools more accessible. The Impact of Agriculture on Water Quality in Southern Trinidad Funding Source: Pace Undergraduate Student & Faculty Research Program ($1,250) Investigators: Danny Deo, student, Monica Palta, faculty Synopsis: Danny Deo '19, Environmental Science (pictured below) conducted field work in Southern Trinidad to discover the impact of agriculture on water quality, specifically how agricultural runoff contributes to microbial and nutrient pollution, and impacts macroinvertebrate communities (an ecological indicator for overall ecological integrity). This work included water and macroinvertebrate sampling in two river systems in Southern Trinidad, one that is heavily developed by agriculture (South Oropouche River) and the other with low levels of human land use (Moruga River). Expanding Wallace Biodiversity Modeling Software to Support National Biodiversity Change Indicator Calculations for GEO BON Assessment and Reporting Funding Source: NASA Co-Investigator: Matthew Aiello-Lammens Synopsis: Effective policy responses to changes in biodiversity are only possible with adaptable analytic tools that leverage the influx of data from biodiversity observation systems. Such analytic tools must also be streamlined and readily mastered by researchers making scientific recommendations. This project focuses on the creation of software to assess biodiversity change indicators by building on the recently developed software, Wallace, as a new GEO BON in a Box tool. Wallace is an R-based application with a graphical user interface that supports species distribution modeling (SDM) in a reproducible, flexible and extensible platform to facilitate a wide range of ecological analyses. The research team is engaging conservation practitioners nationally and internationally as they work to develop tools for the conservation planning and protection of biodiversity everywhere. The following grants and contracts were awarded this past year to faculty members within DCISE and the Department of Environmental Studies and Science. 16 INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT