Staff Report
The program director for ecological studies at the National Science Foundation has been selected as director for the Sevilleta Long-Term Ecological Research Program.
Scott Collins, who has been with the National Science Foundation since 1992, began as director of Sevilleta on March 1. He will also join the UNM Biology Department as a professor.
"The Sevilleta has an excellent history of research and there are many creative ongoing research projects," Collins said in a UNM press release. "The UNM Biology Department has one of the strongest ecology programs in the United States. In addition, the Sevilleta field station is one of the most preeminent field stations in North America."
According to its Web site, Sevilleta, which is located in the Central Rio Grande Basin, focuses on the "floral and faunal properties of transitions between grass and shrub life forms represented by two components of the Chihuahua Desert biome and their junctions with the Great Plains shortgrass steppe biome."
The location of the Long-Term Ecological Research Program is on the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in Socorro County.
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Collins research expertise is focused on plant community dynamics, gradient models and structure, the role of disturbance in communities, analysis of species distribution and abundance, patch dynamics, landscape ecology and fire ecology. He is also an adjunct professor appointment at Kansas State University, the University of Maryland and Arizona State University.
"One of the things I would like to accomplish at Sevilleta is to help the research program become more cohesive," Collins said. "We need to do a better job of engaging faculty on campus and we need to increase graduate student participation in the program.
