nsf_awards_49_million_to_continue_alpine_ecosystem_research_at_niwot_ridge

News Jan 12, 2005

NSF awards $4.9 million to continue alpine ecosystem research at Niwot Ridge

Niwot Ridge flowers. View Large

The Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research project will continue for at least six more years as a result of a $4.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Located adjacent to INSTAAR's Mountain Research Station, Niwot Ridge is the only multidisciplinary, long-term alpine and sub-alpine study site on the continent. The study area encompasses several thousand acres of tundra, talus slopes, glacial lakes and wetlands straddling the Continental Divide 35 miles northwest of Boulder. The new grant will allow faculty and students to continue their studies of natural and human-caused changes that occur over decades and centuries. The eighteen principal investigators on the new NSF award are mostly from INSTAAR and other units at CU-Boulder; other participants are from Univ. of Montana, Univ. of Denver and the USGS. The leader of the project is Mark Williams (Geography, ENVS, and INSTAAR). Topics of study range from hydrology, geochemistry and nutrient transport to paleoecology, microbiology and ecology. The Niwot Ridge region has undergone recent climate warming as well as a four-fold increase in the deposition of atmospheric nitrogen in the past 20 years. The latter is believed to originate primarily from automobile, agricultural, ranching and industrial activity. These factors combined with other environmental changes have resulted in adverse affects on aquatic and terrestrial life in the sub-alpine and alpine environments. The NSF renewal grant for Niwot Ridge is the largest environmental sciences grant to CU-Boulder and helps the university to attract significant amounts of additional funding from other sources for high-mountain research.

News Source: CU-Boulder News Center

ENVS Faculty: Mark Williams

ENVS News Category: Announcement

Want to automatically follow our news and events without having to visit the ENVS website with your browser? Just subscribe to one of our news and calendar feeds.