Provide contract management to ENRTF pass-through appropriation recipients for approximately 115 open grants. Ensure funds are expended in compliance with appropriation law, state statute, grants policies, and approved work plans.
Reducing nitrate leaching on sandy soils of central Minnesota by developing water-efficient production methods, supply chains, and end-use markets for thee profitable perennial crops: Kernza, prairie, and alfalfa.
Provide 7-8 accessible fishing piers in locations that have a high potential to serve new angling communities, undeserved populations and anglers with physical disabilities.
Complete efficient, time-sensitive acquisition of high priority State Park inholdings, conduct needed site cleanup, and convey the properties to the state to enhance Minnesota's environment and public recreation opportunities.
A robot, powered by solar energy, will be developed to control weeds on agricultural lands. We envision significant reductions in fossil-fuel and herbicide use while increasing local energy production.
Through various means, human produced chemicals can make their way into surface waters where they can have adverse effects on the function of ecological communities. Of particular concern are antibiotics and other antimicrobial substances because they have the potential to create increased antibiotic resistance. While there is a background level of naturally occurring antibiotic resistance in the natural world, elevated or persistent levels caused by human activities have the potential to harm human, animal, and overall ecosystem health.
Aquatic invasive species pose critical ecological and economic challenges for the entire state and beyond. They can cause irreparable harm to fisheries and aquatic habitat as well as damage to infrastructure. The problems posed by aquatic invasive species continue to grow as existing infestations expand and new exotic species arrive, most of which are poorly understood. New ideas and approaches are needed to develop real solutions.
There is a critical need to understand how our natural resources are already responding to climate change in order to develop tools for projecting natural resource responses into the future and to devise plans for actions that can be taken in reaction to observed and predicted changes. Phenology – the timing of seasonal biological events such as budburst, flowering, bird migration, and leaf coloring – provides a tested indicator of climate change response by plants and animals.
Over a three-month period in 2010, approximately five million barrels of oil was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico causing extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats and resulting in significant losses in fish and wildlife populations. A number of Minnesota's migratory bird species spend parts of their lives in the areas impacted by the spill and impacts on their populations in the state could become evident over time.
The objective of the present proposal is to assess and provide remedy to the urgent problem of microscopic plastic particles polluting water bodies in Minnesota.
We will assess the environmental quality of prairies across Minnesota. On-the-ground surveys and contaminant risk assessments will help inform partner management actions, endangered species recovery plans, and pollinator reintroduction efforts.
Bees play a key role in ecosystem function and in agriculture, including more than one hundred U.S. crops either need or benefit from pollinators. However, bee pollinators are in dramatic decline in Minnesota and throughout the country. One of the potential causes appears to be a scarcity of bee-friendly flowers, particularly in urban areas, which is leading to nutritional deficiencies, chronic exposure to pesticides, and debilitating diseases and parasites.
We will identify wastewater treatment and natural processes that prevent the formation of highly toxic byproducts from fluoro-pharmaceuticals. This will lead to improved treatment and rules for better pharmaceutical design.
Silver carp are migrating north up the Mississippi River and pose threats to the native fish and aquatic ecosystems of Minnesota rivers and lakes where they can become established. Additionally, the unique jumping ability of silver carp also places recreational boaters in danger of being injured during collisions with airborne fish. However, it is believed that this jumping ability could potentially be exploited as a weakness to help detect, manage, and control silver carp populations. Researchers at the University of Minnesota – Duluth, in cooperation with the U.S.
This study will leverage our current bioacoustics monitoring framework to assess avian diversity at the statewide scale through a citizen science acoustic monitoring program, with a focus on private lands.
