Lake Champlain Sea Grant

Annie Schatz has joined the Lake Champlain Sea Grant team as our new ECO AmeriCorps member for 2016-2017. Annie will be working as part of the Green Infrastructure Collaborative (GIC), a collaboration of Lake Champlain Sea Grant and Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. Annie will be a part of field and lab projects to assess the status of current green stormwater infrastructures and will also help with GIC communications. Annie joins us from a previous AmeriCorps program in Boston after graduating from Pitzer College in 2015. Welcome Annie! 

Do you enjoy riding bikes? Are you interested in learning more about green stormwater infrastructure? If you answered yes to both of these questions, you should try Lake Champlain Sea Grant’s new self-guided bike tour of green infrastructure. The 7-mile loop around Burlington takes you past rain gardens, permeable paving surfaces, green roofs, and gravel wetlands. Notable trees are also highlighted along the route for their stormwater management services. For those visiting Burlington, the bike tour offers a perfect way to get to know the city; locals may get to know a greener side of a familiar landscape. You can pick up a FREE printed map at the following locations:

  • Local Motion (where the tour starts);
  • Lake Champlain Basin Program Resource Room (2nd floor of ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center);
  • Burlington Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Office;
  • Burlington Chamber of Commerce;
  • Or, print your own copy at http://www.uvm.edu/seagrant/GI-bike-map.

Lake Champlain Sea Grant continues to offer trainings and workshops for professionals.

  • A Fisheries Leadership Institute was held in August for community groups, sport fishing industry businesses, tourism organizations, elected officials, and other interested stakeholders. Participants learned about Lake Champlain food web dynamics, physical limnology, fishery biology, fishery management, habitat protection and invasive species.
  • Realtors have the opportunity to learn about water resources, FEMA flood hazard and river corridor maps, Vermont’s Shoreland Protection Act and what these mean for lakeshore development, property values, water quality and erosion risk. Workshops are held regularly and are eligible for Vermont Real Estate License continuing education credits.

Vermont Water Resources and Lake Studies Center

The annual RFP for the National Institutes for Water Resources grant program is now available. Deadline for proposal submission is October 17, 2016. Questions and proposals should be directed to Elissa Schuett (elissa.schuett@uvm.edu). For more information, please visit: http://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/vtwater/?Page=rfp.html

ecoNEWS VT

Are you up to date on what your fellow researchers are learning about ecosystems and ecology in Vermont? ecoNEWS VT provides engaging, readable summaries of recent ecological research in Vermont. When you subscribe, you'll receive a quarterly digest of news and events via email. You can also follow ecoNEWS VT on Twitter and Facebook. 

If you're involved with exciting research that you'd like to share with others in the scientific community, please submit a story idea. The ecoNEWS VT team is always looking for new content for the newsletter and website, and we'd love to hear from you. 

Julia Runcie joins the ecoNEWS VT team this year to write research digests and assist with website updates and social media for ecoNEWS VT. Julia comes to UVM from the Eastern Sierra of California, where she spent five years leading canoe tours, uprooting invasive sweet clover, and tracking bighorn sheep throughout a two-hundred-mile stretch of mountains. She returned there this summer to help design a management plan for a fragile desert hot springs. As a second-year master’s student in the Ecological Planning curriculum, Julia sees effective science communication as a fundamental part of her graduate education. She’s excited to join the ecoNEWS VT team, translating cutting-edge research into compelling narratives for readers in Vermont’s scientific community.