MU and eight other Missouri higher education institutions have received a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation to fund a study on climate change and its potential impact on the state’s agricultural, ecology and economy.
“The Missouri Transect: Climate, Plants and Community” project is expected to take five years.
The project “will model and predict short- and long-term changes in climate and determine the impact on these important plant ecosystems, as well as on the communities that rely on them,” said John Walker, Curators Professor of Biological Sciences and director of the Division of Biological Sciences. Walker is the principal investigator of the project.
Besides the four University of Missouri System campuses, the other participants in the project are the Donald Danforth Plant Sciences Center, Washington University, Lincoln University, the St. Louis Science Center and St. Louis University. The collaborative is known as the Missouri Research Consortium.
The project will draw on each institution’s research expertise in plant sciences, atmospheric and environmental sciences, bioinformatics engineering, social sciences, and science outreach and education. It is comprised of four interdisciplinary teams in the areas of climate, plant biology, community resilience and education/outreach.
“The collaboration among institutions as well as scientific disciplines will help drive the state’s research infrastructure and competitiveness,” said Hank Foley, executive vice president for academic affairs, research and economic development at the UM System and senior vice chancellor for research and graduate studies at MU. “It also will provide opportunities to move research from the lab to the marketplace and thus spur innovation and entrepreneurship.”