News from the Center

On November 30, the University of Massachusetts Amherst hosted a one-day conference for the start of Massachusetts Ecosystem Climate Adaptation Network (Mass ECAN). Participants gathered at the MA Division of Fisheries and Wildlife Headquarters in Westborough.

Mass ECAN is a new community of practice for climate change adaptation practitioners and researchers who are interested in ecosystem resilience and natural resources conservation.

“Make-It Springfield,” the downtown Springfield collaborative design and makerspace co-founded by Michael DiPasquale in June 2016, was awarded $50,000 in funding to support its growth. The funding includes $25,000 from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts “Collaborative Workspace Program” administered by MassDevelopment and a matching grant of $25,000 provided by the MassMutual Foundation.

AMHERST, Mass. – Hydrogeologist David Boutt, an associate professor and geoscientist the University of Massachusetts Amherst since 2005, has been named the Birdsall-Dreiss Distinguished Lecturer for 2018 by the Geological Society of America’s (GSA) hydrogeology division. It is now typical for the lecturer to give 40 or 50 talks, mainly in the U.S. and Canada. Boutt says he already has lecture tour stops planned in China, Chile, Argentina and South Korea and he hopes to add many more. (News Office 8/10/17)

If you had been looking out across the UMass Amherst campus on a recent late June afternoon, you would have seen young 4-H’ers undertaking some unexpected projects.  Drones lifted off the ground (operated by 8th grade students). DNA was extracted from their own bodies.  Pond organisms were scrutinized beneath the fine lens of a microscope. These were some of the activities on tap during a three-day event called Explore UMass, part of 4-H’s “Summer of Science.”