Research assistant professor, Emma Elliott Smith, awarded $957,485 NSF grant to reconstruct historical ecological changes in Middle Rio Grande fish communities

New NSF award will reconstruct 800 years of ecological change in the Middle Rio Grande. Emma Elliott Smith, Research Assistant Professor at CSI and Research Associate at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, has been awarded $957,485 from the National Science Foundation as lead PI on "Fish, Floodplains, and People: Reconstructing Ecological Change of New Mexico's Middle Rio Grande Basin" (Award #2621746), alongside co-PIs Thomas Turner, Seth Newsome, Jonathan Dombrosky, and Alexi Besser. The project uses stable isotope analysis of museum specimens to trace centuries of change in Middle Rio Grande fish communities, work that will inform conservation and water management across the basin.