New College Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies Meg Lowman Published in Science Magazine

New College Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies Meg Lowman had her article “ECOLOGY: A National Ecological Network for Research and Education” published in the February 27, 2009 issue of Science. The article is the culmination of four years Lowman spent with a team of national ecologists to fund a new and innovative science education program.

The article discusses the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), a continental-scale research platform to study the nation’s ecological challenges, the increase in citizen science programs, research and education for public policy and informed policy-making. Given the urgent environmental challenges we face as a nation, Lowman and the other contributing scientists hope to raise the ecological literacy in the United States. Congress expects to fund NEON with several hundred million dollars over the next 30 years, which will foster an enormous boost for ecology education on a national scale.

Lowman specializes in canopy ecology, science education and conservation biology at New College. Her research on tropical rain forests spans over 30 years in Australia, Peru, Africa, the Americas and the South Pacific. She has written nearly 100 peer-reviewed publications. In the treetops, she pioneered work on plant-insect interactions and developed new methods of canopy access. She co-edited the definitive textbook Canopy Biology and chaired the first two international canopy conferences in 1994 and 1998.

To view Lowman’s article in Science online, visit: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/323/5918/1172.

For more information contact Aimee Chouinard, Media Relations Coordinator, (941) 487-4152 or [email protected].