Insidethisissue - aha Creative Ink

Alumna, professor, student receive
grants for rangelands research
Prescott College alumna
and Northern Arizona
University (NAU) graduate
Tischa Muñoz-Erickson
’99 headed up a team that
recently received national
recognition and a $10,000 grant
from the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) for its
P3 program, a student design
competition for sustainability.
Muñoz-Erickson and
Mathew Loeser, an NAU student,
in partnership with the
Diablo Trust and Prescott
College Professor Bernardo
Aguilar-González, designed a
monitoring tool to help achieve
sustainable management of
rangelands in northern Arizona.
The program—named P3 for
People, Prosperity, and the
Planet—is a collaboration
between the EPA and 35 partners
from industry, government
agencies, and nongovernmental
organizations. It emphasizes
the interrelationship of economic
prosperity, the protection
of productive ecosystems,
and efforts to provide people
with a higher quality of life.
The P3 competition provides
grants to teams of college students
to design and implement
sustainable solutions to environmental
challenges.
The monitoring tool measures
important ecological and
social aspects of rangeland
management such as soil quality,
grassland and forest health,
wildlife viability, economic stability,
community strength, and
public awareness.
This information is designed
to be used by managers and
local stakeholders to assess
whether rangelands are being
managed in a sustainable fashion
and to help guide future
management decisions.
52 TransitionsFall 2004
The research team will work
with the Diablo Trust, a collaborative
land management group
in Flagstaff, to implement the
monitoring tool across the
Trust’s 400,000 acres. The
Diablo Trust has worked with
NAU and Prescott College to
design the monitoring tool.
Commitment of financial support
from a private foundation
will allow the Trust to implement
it.
“The help and support from
the Diablo Trust to this project
is invaluable; this group exemplifies
the benefits of collaboration
between researchers, landowners,
and the public,” said team
leader Muñoz-Erickson.
“The Diablo Trust continues
to support this innovative and
extremely important effort with
our time, energy, and ideas,”
said Norm Wallen of the
Diablo Trust.
The project also received
attention from other national
organizations. The Communitybased
Collaborative Research
Consortium in Virginia is supporting
this effort with two
grants for a total of $30,000 to
fund testing of this monitoring
tool with the Diablo Trust, and
to collaborate with other groups
in comparing experiences using
sustainability monitoring tools
and explore their applicability to
other areas in the West.
Other members of the
research team include Prescott
College student Jeff Bayha,
and Tom Sisk, whose NAU lab
has been researching grasslands
and grazing since 1996.
For additional information
contact Aguilar-González at
(928) 533-3168, e-mail:
baguilar@prescott.edu, Muñoz-
Erickson at (928) 523-2237, email:
Tischa.Munoz-Erickson@
nau. edu), or Norm Lowe, president
of the Diablo Trust at (928)
527-0661; e-mail: loweflag@
msn. com).