The SES lab engages in a wide variety of outreach and education work, ranging from formal programs on campus through NSF funded graduate training, to extension programs in cooperation with Arizona Cooperative Extension, to partnerships with federal agencies to support adaptive range management.
CAMBIUM: Climate change Adaptation and Mitigation through Biodiversity Infromatics edUcation and Mentoring
CAMBIUM is a NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) grant designed to train graduate students (MS and PhD) to 1) analyze, link, and visualize data across space, time, and scales of biological organization 3) create tools to make data and outcomes accessible and useful to policymakers and managers, and 3) develop approaches that link data and outcomes with other disciplines through a One Health approach. While there are many programs in bioinformatics and in policy and public administration available to graduate students, these fields are rare linking to all students to develop interdisciplinary toolkits that increase the impacts of research outcomes. The goal of CAMBIUM is to train a cohort of students with these interdisciplinary skills
Adaptive Rangeland Management using Precision Agricultural Technologies
Building on the lab’s work on virtual fencing technology as an innovative tool for advancing adaptive rangeland management, we have developed a suite of extension products to help producers learn about virtual fence, how it works, what it takes to adopt it, what we know and don’t know about the effectiveness of the technology, economics, and other considerations. We’ve reached communities with this information through workshops, Extension publications, webinars, online videos, and the Virtual Fence User Guide, hosted by the Rangelands Gateway. Beyond virtual fence, the lab works with community organizations such as the Rancher Heritage Alliance and the Altar Valley Conservation Alliance to develop workshops and provide students opportunities to engage in rangeland management and monitoring in support of community goals.
Supporting Agencies and Permittees with Objective Data
The lab has contracts with the USFS’s Region 3 and the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest’s range programs to assist these programs with maintaining high quality rangeland inventory and monitoring data over the long-term. These data help to support both the USFS’s and permittee’s management goals and provide essential documentation in support of NEPA and ESA reviews and to help resolve any conflicts should they arise. We also work with Region 3 on special projects such as developing a new version of the Grazing Response Index for continuously grazed rangelands. The GRI is a simple tool for facilitating communication about the impacts of management decisions. With the BLM, we are working to develop improved data on livestock distribution on desert ranges to support management decisions.