Environmental Science & Ecology Professor Awarded $158,363 in Funding
Dr. Rachel Schultz was awarded $158,363 from the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Adaptive Management Committee (GLAM) of the International Joint Commission through the Army Corps of Engineers to evaluate the Effects of Lake Ontario Water levels on wetland vegetation on the U.S. coast.
Dr. Schultz’s GLAM project complements work by the Canadian Wildlife Service on the Canadian shoreline of Lake Ontario and is part of an expedited review of the Plan 2014 water level regulation plan that was implemented in 2017. Dr. Doug Wilcox, emeritus faculty of the Environmental Science and Ecology department, documented the environmental effects of the previous water level regulation plan, 1958DD in the early 2000s. Dr. Schultz worked on the original Lake Ontario study and currently oversees the Great Lakes Coastal Wetland Monitoring Program vegetation sampling on Lake Ontario for the SUNY Brockport team (Dr. Kathryn Amatangelo, PI).
Adellia Baker, a graduate student in the Environmental Science and Ecology program, will be leading the field sampling effort at 18+ wetlands along the Lake Ontario shore in 2023 and 2024 using high precision GPS surveying equipment. Results of this work will help us better understand the response of wetland vegetation to changing water levels, including more recent erratic fluctuations caused by climate change.
The award will be administered by The Research Foundation for SUNY at SUNY Brockport under the Scholarship, Research & Sponsored Programs Office.