NRESS News

The USDA has announced $55 million in grant funding through the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) to support innovative agricultural production systems research, including a project by University of New Hampshire researchers who will investigate ways to adapt cropping systems for increasingly variable weather. The UNH project, led by Rich Smith, a professor in the department of...

UNH Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science William H. McDowell was recently named a 2024 Fellow of the international Society for Freshwater Science (SFS) for his research contributions to aquatic science. McDowell, whose teaching and research career spans more than four decades, serves as the director of the New Hampshire Water Resources Research Center. His research examines the impacts of...

Life might have been very different for Remington (Rem) Moll, assistant professor in the department of natural resources and the environment, if a leg injury suffered in his junior year of college hadn’t derailed his plans to become a professional athlete. But fortunately, Moll — who, along with his brother, was one of the first two people in his family to complete college — had already begun to...

Long before the snow melts and the heavy coats get stored for the season, the quintessential signs that spring is not too far away in New Hampshire are maple trees that become dotted with buckets and the coming alive of the sugar shacks that have been hibernating for many months. In 2022, three New England states—Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont—and New York were in the top six states producing...

A member of the weasel family, the fisher (Pekania pennanti) lives only in North America and is highly valued for its fur. A combination of habitat loss and over trapping led to the near extinction of the fisher (sometimes referred to as a fisher cat) in the early 1900s. And while trapping limits (two per season in the Granite State) and reintroduction programs have helped bolster their numbers...

Two UNH faculty, Serita Frey and Stuart Grandy, both from the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, were included in Clarivate’s 2023 Highly Cited Researchers list, which identifies the top 0.1% of the world’s scientists who have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their field or fields of research. The list is made up of influential researchers at universities, research...

The University of New Hampshire has contributed to a first-of-its-kind new report looking at carbon dioxide (CO2) removal in the United States. Mark Ducey, professor of natural resources and the environment, is one of the researchers from more than a dozen institutions involved in the high-resolution assessment, “Roads to Removal: Options for Carbon Dioxide Removal in the United States,” which...

Key Research Finding The genetic diversity of saltmarsh sparrow populations is impacted by geographical distance, environmental factors and landscape features, highlighting the importance of protecting diverse marsh types—including inland, coastal and urban—across the range of the species to preserve its genetic and ecological diversity. The study also raised considerations about the...

Sean Schaefer, a Ph.D. student in UNH’s Natural Resources and Earth Systems Science program, was selected for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) prestigious Graduate Student Research Program. Schaefer, who studies microbial ecology in the Arctic with associate professor of natural resources and the environment Jessica Ernakovich, was one of just 60 graduate students nationwide to receive this honor...

Key Finding: In a study of the activity of 12 mammal species in rural versus suburban areas in New Hampshire, researchers found that bobcats and lagomorphs (rabbits and hares) reduced their activity in suburban areas, while deer and coyotes shifted to being more active at night. The study results highlight how mammals change their behavior in complex ways to adapt to growing suburban...