{"id":920,"date":"2022-12-14T08:06:52","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T13:06:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.seagrant.w3.uvm.edu\/2022\/12\/14\/breck-bowdens-decade-long-leadership-steers-lake-champlain-sea-grant-to-enhanced-national-status-and-funding\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T17:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T21:49:09","slug":"breck-bowdens-decade-long-leadership-steers-lake-champlain-sea-grant-to-enhanced-national-status-and-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/2022\/12\/14\/breck-bowdens-decade-long-leadership-steers-lake-champlain-sea-grant-to-enhanced-national-status-and-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"Breck Bowden\u2019s Decade-Long Leadership Steers Lake Champlain Sea Grant to Enhanced National Status and Funding"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDr. William \u201cBreck\u201d Bowden led Lake Champlain Sea Grant<\/a> with care and impact while serving as the inaugural Robert F. and Genevieve B. Patrick Endowed Chair in Watershed Science and Planning at the University of Vermont (UVM)\u00a0Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources<\/a>. Breck retired from UVM in 2022 and will step down as Director of Lake Champlain Sea Grant in December.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs director of Lake Champlain Sea Grant for the past ten years, Breck Bowden steered the program to institute-status, which increased its base budget to more than a million dollars annually,\u201d said Jonathan Pennock, director of the National Sea Grant College Program. \u201cBreck\u2019s capable leadership and his expertise in watershed and aquatic sciences have strengthened Sea Grant programming in the Lake Champlain basin, the Northeast, the Great Lakes region, and the National Sea Grant Program.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring Breck\u2019s leadership, Lake Champlain Sea Grant grew from a staff of two and an annual budget of $0.4 million to a staff of 16 with an annual budget surpassing $1.3 million. As a Sea Grant Institute, Lake Champlain Sea Grant was able to expand support of research and outreach throughout the Lake Champlain basin in both Vermont and New York. With Breck at the helm, the program became a leader in education, extension, and research in support of basin ecosystems and economies with a focus on solutions to the basin\u2019s challenges.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to Lake Champlain Sea Grant, Breck leaves a legacy of research-granting programs that are much enhanced by his skillful leadership and that have contributed scientific findings to improve water and forest resources throughout the state of Vermont and the Northeast. Breck also led the\u00a0Vermont Water Resources and Lake Studies Center<\/a> and the Vermont component of the\u00a0Northeastern States Research Cooperative<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBreck Bowden has done great work securing and delivering federal support for important natural resource programs at the University of Vermont,\u201d said U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.\u00a0\u201cWith his leadership, the Lake Champlain Sea Grant program has achieved full institute status and the Northeastern States Research Cooperative has been renewed.\u00a0Breck\u2019s contributions to the Lake Champlain Basin Program have been invaluable, and he has helped to initiate several new federal opportunities.\u00a0Breck is a good friend, and my staff and I have looked to him often, for many years, for advice and guidance on water resource and policy issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs director of the three federally-funded research programs, Breck was instrumental in bringing more than $27 million to UVM in support of water- and forest-related research by principal investigators in the Lake Champlain basin of Vermont and New York, the state of Vermont, and the Northern Forest region of Vermont, New York, New Hampshire, and Maine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe highlight of my career at UVM has been to establish the Lake Champlain Sea Grant Institute and to work with its incredibly dedicated staff to make this program the engine of reliable knowledge generation and dissemination that it is today,\u201d said Breck. \u201cI will be excited to follow how the Rubenstein School and Lake Champlain Sea Grant evolve in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tResearch, Teaching, and Leadership<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tIn the Rubenstein School, Breck served as Patrick Professor for 20 years and as Interim Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research for two of those years.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs a renowned scientist himself, and especially recognized for his work in Arctic stream ecology and climate change, Breck maintained a productive personal research program that connected two distinct regions: the North Slope in Arctic Alaska and Vermont\u2019s Lake Champlain basin. Throughout his career, Breck conducted research on interactions among land use, land cover, and water resources. He studied wetland, terrestrial, and aquatic ecosystems in temperate, tropical, and Arctic biomes. He authored or co-authored more than 130 peer-reviewed scientific publications and 50 technical reports related to his research.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom 1986 until 2022, he was a member of the core research team for the\u00a0Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research Program<\/a>\u00a0based at the\u00a0Toolik Field Station<\/a>\u00a0on the North Slope of Alaska. For many years, he coordinated the stream ecological research component of this large, long-term, collaborative research program. Breck\u2019s research contributions include work on the effects of stream network structure on biogeochemical processing in stream ecosystems and on the use of next-generation, high-frequency sensors to explore whole-watershed dynamics.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn multiple advisory positions, Breck contributed substantially to regional, national, and international programs that seek to integrate science in resource management decision making. Programs included the national Sea Grant Association<\/a>, National Institute for Water Resources<\/a>, Lake Champlain Basin Program<\/a> and National Science Foundation\u2019s Long-Term Ecological Research Program<\/a>, National Environmental Observatory Network<\/a>, and Vermont Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research<\/a> (EPSCoR).<\/p>\n

\n\tAn avid proponent of science communication, Breck advocated to create ecoNews Vermont<\/a>, a website and quarterly newsletter dedicated to translating and disseminating the latest findings in ecological research from across Vermont. From 2016 to 2022, this endeavor provided opportunities for several graduate students to write, edit, and post science news stories.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the Rubenstein School, Breck taught undergraduate and graduate courses in stream ecology, ecological risk assessment, ecological stoichiometry, stormwater management, stream modeling, and more. He advised more than 400 undergraduates and mentored a dozen undergraduate research theses and projects. He advised 12 master\u2019s students, 9 PhD students, and 2 postdoctoral fellows.<\/p>\n

\n\tBreck participated in strategic planning at universities and in government agencies. He founded the Water Resources Management undergraduate and graduate programs at the University of New Hampshire, where he also helped to establish the Natural Resources MS and PhD programs. As lead project manager and team leader, he started the national Integrated Catchment Management Program at Landcare Research in New Zealand, where he provided science leadership for a national research program of 40 scientists and collaborators.<\/p>\n

\n\tBreck received his bachelor\u2019s degree in zoology and chemistry from the University of Georgia. He earned his master\u2019s and PhD degrees from North Carolina State University, working with Dr. John Hobbie on microbes and biogeochemistry of nitrogen in aquatic ecosystems. He completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at Yale University with the late Dr. Herbert Bormann, working on effects of forest whole-tree harvesting on greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs a dedicated steward of Vermont\u2019s waterways, Breck looks forward to new and different opportunities to engage in science advocacy and community involvement in retirement. He and his wife Linda plan to spend time on their sailboat on Lake Champlain, hiking the trails of Vermont, and visiting with their Vermont- and Texas-based children and grandchildren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. William \u201cBreck\u201d Bowden led Lake Champlain Sea Grant with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1564,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=920"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1241,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920\/revisions\/1241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}