Achievement

Four IGERT Associates and Trainees, Julia Brandes (economics), Rebecca Crosthwait (anthropology), Laci Gerhart (biology), & Adam Sundberg (environmental history) presented a poster, "Climates and Communities in Crisis," at the University of Kansas Annual Graduate Research Competition. Their poster was a direct product of the Fall 2009 IGERT course on Climates & Borders and was a study of the interaction between climate change and social change in the over-wintering sites of the Monarch butterflies in Michoacan, Mexico - an area of intense international and national ecological interest. Their study focused on the potential impact of climate change on both monarch and human populations and how these impacts are complicated by governmental definitions of protected and unprotected lands.