Congrats to Ellen Audia on successfully defending her Master's thesis! Ellen's thesis is titled: Balancing crop and ecosystem service production in the US Corn Belt through spatially targeted conservation. Ellen's next stop is with Michigan State University's Kellogg Biological Station, where she will be working as a technician with the Long-term Ecological Research Station.

Attending the Iowa Water Conference this week? The IALE-NA meetings next week? Look for lab members Ellen Audia and Dr. Suraj Upadhaya there!

Lisa Schulte Moore selected as a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (ESA). According to ESA, "Fellows are members who have made outstanding contributions to a wide range of fields served by ESA, including, but not restricted to, those that advance or apply ecological knowledge in academics, government, non-profit organizations, and the broader society. They are elected for life."

Congrats, Dr. Valek, on successfully defending your dissertation!!! Robert's dissertation is titled: Advancing PEWI: An ecosystem service and economic outcomes simulator for agricultural and natural resource education.

Neh will be presenting on PEWI at the upcoming North Central Regional meeting of the American Association for Agricultural Education. In addition to the PEWI tool, he will be discussing improvements to the educational supports available for teachers through the online teachers guide.

This week we welcomed Melanie Bogert, a new Master's student, to the lab. Melanie brings a deep passion for and skill sets in forestry, restoration, and spatial analysis to the lab. We're excited to have her on the LESEM Lab team!

Congrats, Jordan Giese! He was awarded both the 2020 NREM Teaching Assistant Award and a Teaching Excellence Award from ISU. We are so proud to work with you.

The grant will help scientists, industry, and farmers harness herbaceous biomass and manure to fuel farms and improve environmental outcomes.

Lab director, Lisa Schulte Moore, was featured on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, discussing prairie strips and farmland conservation.

Congrats to our graduating seniors -- Kendall Bennet, Charli Miller, Collin Stratton, Matt Theisen, and Riggs Wilson -- in their achievement and good luck as they pursue the next phase of their career. We're proud of them and excited about where they will go! And welcome aboard to our new summer techs, Alyssa Baldwin and Mary Kate Shaver!

Lisa Schulte Moore is honored to receive the 2020 Ivy College of Business innovationENTREPRENEUR Award.

ISU C-CHANGE, NREM, and the LESEM Lab are excited to host Dr. Nick Haddad from Michigan State University's Kellogg Biological Station for a University Lecture on Thursday, March 5th, at 5:30 pm in the Memorial Union Sun Room. Dr. Haddad's lecture is titled, "Reconnecting landscapes for nature and for people." 

ISU C-CHANGE hosts its inaugural Conference on Agriculture, Technology, and Innovation on March 25-27 in Des Moines, Iowa. Read more about it here.

Lab members Jordan Giese and Matt Stephenson will be presenting their research on bird response to prairie strips at the 2020 Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference, January 26-29, in Springfield, Illinois.

CP-43: This is the program code that makes prairie strips are eligible for federal funding through the Conservation Reserve Program! Read about the STRIPS team's work with USDA in developing the federal policy guidance.

Going to the Green Lands Blue Waters conference in Minneapolis this week? Look for lab member Ellen Audia presenting her research poster on Valuing ecosystem services under contrasting land use scenarios in the Grand River Basin.

We're excited to host University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor Larkin Powell for the NREM seminar today. His seminar is will be on the interactions between prairie chickens and wind turbines at 3:10 pm in 220 Science II. He's super productive an cool, and if that's not enough for you, you should know that his parents have prairie strips on their farm just outside of Creston, Iowa!

We're recruiting graduate students -- Master's and PhD -- to work on PEWI, a land use tradeoffs game developed by the lab. Apply before February 1, 2020 for full consideration. Find more information here.