David R. Luukkonen Waterfowl and Wetland Graduate Student Fellowship
This fellowship was established to honour the long-term and large-scale avian science contributions of Dr. David R. Luukkonen, who we lost in 2021. Initial funding for this fellowship is generously being provided by the Upper Mississippi/Great Lakes Joint Venture. Subsequent funding will be provided via an endowment established in Dave’s name through the generous contributions of organizations and family, friends, and colleagues of Dave.
The first recipient of this award is MSc candidate, Amanda Griswold, from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point. Her research will evaluate the accuracy of a decision support tool, the Wisconsin Waterfowl Habitat Conservation Strategy.
Identifying breeding habitats that promote nest success, duckling survival, and recruitment is critical for effective waterfowl conservation. Recently, biologists in Wisconsin developed a decision support tool to guide waterfowl habitat restoration and retention efforts by ranking watersheds for conservation priority. The tool uses biological data to predict where breeding habitat exists for mallards, wood ducks, blue-winged teal, and ring-necked ducks, but the predictions of the tool have not been formally evaluated. Amanda will:
- Use uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) with thermal imaging to collect observations of breeding pairs and broods at 22 sites across a range of conservation priority rankings in Wisconsin, and
- Examine drivers of variation in breeding pair and brood densities at wetlands.
The use of UAS will allow Amanda to estimate productivity in an efficient and non-invasive manner and her study will provide important field data to assess decision support tool accuracy.
About the Fellowship
Support from this Fellowship is dedicated to addressing Upper Mississippi/Great Lakes Joint Venture (JV) waterfowl, waterbird, wetland, and relevant social science evaluation priorities (see https://umgljv.org/science/). Graduate students located at any North American university are eligible for this Fellowship. It is awarded based on:
- The qualifications of the applicant
- The scientific soundness of the student’s research proposal
- Originality and creativity in study design
- Expected contributions of the study to waterfowl / wetland bird conservation and management in the JV region
- The achievability of the work
For the first three years, two awards of up to $10,000 USD/year are available to provide personal or research support for successful applicants. Each award is renewable for up to two additional years for PhD students, one additional year for students pursuing a Master’s degree, assuming annual approval of a satisfactory progress report and the need for continuing financial support.