Thursday, December 5, 2002

WRITER: Phil Williams, 706/542-8501, phil@franklin.uga.edu
SOURCE: Ted Gragson, 706/542-1460, tgragson@uga.edu

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA RECEIVES GRANT FOR $6.7 MILLION TO STUDY LAND-USE CHANGE IN SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS

ATHENS, Ga. – The University of Georgia has received a National Science Foundation grant of some $6.7 million to study, with cooperating federal agencies and other universities, the ecological consequences of land-use change in the southern Appalachian Mountains.

The grant extends for another six years the Coweeta Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program centered at the U.S. Forest Service’s Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory in Otto, N.C.

"In this new study, we plan to pull together information from 1850 to the present on the interaction of people and the environment in the region — something that has never been done for southern Appalachia," said Ted Gragson, an associate professor of anthropology at UGA and coprincipal investigator for the project. "We will use the information to make forecasts that could influence everything from ecological to public policy recommendations."

The other coprincipal investigators are James Vose of the Forest Service and Brian Kloeppel of UGA’s Institute of Ecology, both at Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, and some 25 researchers from seven universities: UGA, Virginia Tech, the University of Minnesota, Duke University, Mars Hill University, the University of North Carolina at Asheville and the University of Wisconsin.

The National Science Foundation announced approval for the grant in mid-November. More than a dozen UGA faculty members in several colleges and departments are involved in research projects under the umbrella of the grant.

The Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory is located in the southern Appalachian Mountains and contains stands of eastern deciduous forest of varying ages, white pine plantations and numerous streams. The site is administered by the USDA Forest Service. (The Forest Service operates as a subcontractor to UGA on the project.)

Natural disturbances, such as insect outbreaks, regional drought and chestnut blight, have changed the area, as has clear-cutting. These have been used as tools for studying ecosystem response to and recovery from disturbance. Currently, more than 25 active cooperative agreements have been developed between the Forest Service and other agencies and institutions. Studies range from single investigator efforts to national and international projects involving numerous investigators and multiple sites.

The Coweeta LTER Program has evolved since 1980 from a site-based to a site- and region-based project that examines the effects of disturbance and environmental gradients on biogeochemical cycling. The focus of the 1996-2002 Coweeta LTER research was to investigate the complex interactions of natural disturbances and human land use across a range of scales.

There are 25 LTER projects nationally. Projects are funded for six years, and so the newly funded research at Coweeta — while technically a renewal — had to be won competitively, and it will take the studies there in new directions through the grant’s new end period in 2008.

"Our guiding hypothesis," said Gragson, "is that the frequency, intensity and extent of land use represent human decision-making that cascades through ecosystems. During the next six years, we will build on 21 years of Coweeta LTER research to advance scientific understanding of the southern Appalachian Mountains."

The project will study 60 counties in four states. Counties in Georgia include Dawson, Fannin, Gilmer, Habersham, Murray, Lumpkin, Pickens, Rabun, Stephens, Towns, Union and White.

In the previous six-year research cycle, more than 200 research publications were generated from the Coweeta LTER, as well as some 12 dissertations and theses.

##