by Al Ossinger
The Colorado Mountain Club Foundation has awarded the 2001 Neal B. Kindig fellowship to William W. Merkle. Merkle is a graduate of Stanford and now a doctoral student in the Environmental, Population, and Organismic Biology department of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Merkle’s research deals with an examination of the impacts of recreational trail use on the nesting success of two birds—the yellow warbler and the American robin. Study sites are located primarily in City of Boulder open space areas. Merkle hopes his research will correlate the success of the bird reproductions with trail use by people as well as examine the indirect consequences of this activity on natural predators.
William Merkle
The Kindig fellowship is the highest award given by the foundation. It is named in honor of the late professor of Electrical Engineering at CU, Boulder. Since 1982, the CMC Foundation has provided an academic awards program to stimulate research at Colorado institutions of higher learning. Funding comes from interest in the CMCF general fund and from private donations.
The fellowship program is in keeping with the mission of the Colorado Mountain Club. Written in 1912, the mission states in part that the CMC is organized “to collect and disseminate information regarding the Rocky Mountains on behalf of science, literature, art, and recreation; to stimulate public interest in the mountain area; [and] to encourage the preservation of forests, flowers, fauna, and natural scenery….”
The other highest-rated candidates for CMCF grants were Kailen Mooney, David Pepin, and Brad Taylor. Mooney, a doctoral candidate with Professor Yan Linhart in the E.P.O Biology Department at CU, Boulder, is continuing his research on the effects of multiple predators on the ecology of Ponderosa pine canopies. Kailen received the Kindig Fellowship last year.
David Pepin, a graduate of Western State College in Gunnison with an M.S. from the University of Montana, is studying aquatic ecosystem response to subalpine stream flow diversion. Brad Taylor’s research is based at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Crested Butte on the subject of linking species behavior and ecosystem function through examining the effects of non-native trout on the dynamics of headwater streams. Taylor is a graduate of Cornell.
A second tier of awards this year includes Eric DeChaine, with a study of quaternary climate change impacts on alpine plant-insect association; Debra Finn, who is doing Ph.D. research on geographic isolation and stream-bottom insect communities in Colorado alpine streams; Dominik Kulakowski with the topic, “The role of spruce beetle outbreaks on the character of young, subalpine forests,” and Daniel Lipzin, who is studying the effects of trees on the ecosystem processes in the forest-tundra transition zone.
The Foundation review committee this year consisted of Rosemary Burbank, Kurt Gerstle, Kent Groninger, Giles Toll, and Al Ossinger, chairman.
Announcements and applications for the CMC grants are distributed at the end of each year, and there is a deadline of March 31 for applications. The foundation encourages CMC members, especially, to recruit suitable candidates for these awards and to help with financial contributions to the program.