Contact: Steve Carr (505) 277-1821

February 27, 2003 NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION PROGRAM DIRECTOR NAMED TO HEAD UNM’S SEVILLETA LONG TERM ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROGRAM Scott Collins, program director in ecological studies at the National Science Foundation (NSF), has been named director of the University of New Mexico’s Sevilleta Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program effective March 1. He will also serve as a professor in the UNM Biology Department. Collins has been with the NSF since 1992. He also worked with the LTER Program at NSF and various other capacities including the establishment of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis located in Santa Barbara, Calif., and the development of the NSF’s concept for National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). NEON was designed to create a nationwide distributed network of field and laboratory based infrastructure for the ecological research community. “The Sevilleta has an excellent history of research and there are many creative ongoing research projects,” Collins said. “The UNM Biology Department has one of the strongest ecology programs in the United States. In addition, the Sevilleta Field Station is one of the preeminent field stations in North America. All the pieces are in place to make the Sevilleta LTER a truly outstanding research program. Yet, the current LTER research activities still need to be drawn together into a unified, but broadly based, research program.” The Sevilleta LTER is located in the central Rio Grande Basin and is one of NSF’s LTER Network sites. The Sevilleta LTER Program is located primarily on the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in Socorro County in central New Mexico where a junction of four biomes – Great Plains Grassland, Great Basin Shrub-steppe, Chihuahuan Desert and Montane Coniferous Forest – provides a rich assortment of Biome Transition Zones (BTZ). The large area, elevational range (1,350 - 2,797m), complex topography, geology and soils that interacting with several major air mass dynamics, provide a complex spatial and temporal template for the BTZs. The Sevilleta LTER program focuses on the dynamics of these complex interfaces. Collins’ research interests include plant community dynamics, gradient models and structure, the role of disturbance in communities, fire ecology, patch dynamics, landscape ecology, grassland ecology, and analysis of species distribution and abundance. “One of the things I would like to accomplish at Sevilleta is to help the research program become more cohesive and integrated,” Collins said. “Integration is one of the hallmarks of a successful LTER site as it matures over time. We need to do a better job of engaging the faculty on campus and we need to increase graduate student participation in the program.” Prior to NSF, Collins was an associate professor of botany at the University of Oklahoma University. Before that he was a postdoctoral research associate at Rutgers University. He currently holds adjunct professor appointments at Kansas State University, the University of Maryland and Arizona State University. Collins received his master’s in botany from Miami University (1977) and Ph.D., also in botany, from the University of Oklahoma (1981). # # #

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