David Robinson, Chair of the Geography Department and State Climatologist,
received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the AAG's Climate Specialty Group.
Dr. Robinson was also received an Environmental Hero Award from NOAA. http://www.noaa.gov/earthday/

Dinali Nelun Fernando, has been awarded the inaugural William H. Greenberg Fellowship for research on climate and environmental change. The fellowship is awarded to a post-qualifying student in a Rutgers Ph.D. program.  Administered by the Rutgers Climate and Environmental Change Initiative, the fellowship includes six (6) tuition credits and a twelve (12) month stipend to support Ms. Fernando's research on predicting and monitoring drought in the humid tropics.

Ms. Fernando was selected by a committee of faculty members appointed by the CECI leadership.

Elizabeth S. Barron, a doctoral student in the Department of Geography at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, working under the supervision of Richard Schroeder, was awarded the American Association for the Advancement of Science's 2007 Canon National Parks Science Scholarship. The project is titled "Our Morel Dilemma: A Theory of Macro-Fungi Conservation for the U.S. National Park Service." The $80,000 award is for three (3) years and will examine the emergence and development of fungal management and conservation in the US and elsewhere from both sociological and ecological perspectives, using morel mushrooms as a case study.

Laura Schneider, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, is the Principal Investigator on a new Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation three-year grant totaling $989,934. The project is titled "Ecosystem-level Response to Large Scale Natural Disturbance in Southern Yucatán: Evaluating Forest Resilience in Protected Areas." Co-PIs on the project are John Rogan (Clark University), Deborah Lawrence (University of Virginia) and Birgit Schmook (El Colegio de la Frontera Sur). The award underwrites investigation into the impact of weather extremes on forests in the Southern Yucatan Peninsula following hurricane events. The research seeks to increase understanding of the forest ecosystem and landscape- level responses following large-scale disturbances and to increase the technical and scientific capacity for science-based approaches to long-term management at agencies at the Calakmul and Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserves.