Applications are now closed. Applications for the 2025 fellowship will open in December 2024.
About the Fellowship
There are many ways of exploring and understanding the natural world. Tribal Nations and Indigenous peoples have cultural identities developed through millennia of connection with their homelands. Farmers and ranchers have deep understandings of the plants, animals, soils, and weather patterns at the foundation of their livelihoods. Intercity communities live and work among urban ecosystems and have unique experiences with the intersections between nature and society, power and class. Yet, traditional Western science often does not value these knowledge systems or provide ways of integrating knowledge held outside the peer-reviewed literature. In creating these silos, the scientific community is unable to fully understand the diverse peoples and ecosystems that make up our nation.
The Diverse Knowledge Systems for Climate Adaptation (DKS) Fellowship provides graduate students an opportunity to explore the unique perspectives they bring to science. Over the course of the one-year fellowship, students will collaborate with USGS researchers to develop a project applying their unique knowledge system to applied climate adaptation research. Mentors from the USGS Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASCs) will work with fellows to identify how their science can help on-the-ground practitioners understand, plan for, and adapt to climate change impacts. They will also teach them how to work with stakeholders and rightsholders to ensure their work is useful for those who need it, exemplifying the partnership-based model of the CASC network.
As a fellow, you will:
- Develop and implement a 1-year project that uses your unique knowledge system to help natural resource managers and/or communities understand, plan for, and/or adapt to climate change impacts.
- Have a $10,000 award to spend on DKS project expenses, such as travel to and from project locations
- Be mentored by CASC experts focused on engagement-centered research designed to meet on-the-ground needs
- Travel to work with CASC mentors for 2 months (typically during the summer) and meet with USGS staff, university faculty, and project partners
During the fellowship year and beyond, fellows benefit from collaborations with university and USGS mentors, from interactions with other colleagues and partners of USGS, and from exposure to high priority, real-world challenges in the natural resources policy arena.
The fellowship is supported through the Morgan State University Patuxent Environmental and Aquatic Research Laboratory and is coordinated by National CASC Research Fish Biologist Abigail Lynch.
Eligibility
The CASC culture is to advance diversity, inclusion, and empowerment for traditionally underrepresented communities. This opportunity is open to graduate students at:
Applicants must be registered students for the entire fellowship year (justified exceptions will be considered in special cases).
About the CASCs
The USGS Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASCs) is a partnership-driven program that delivers science to help fish, wildlife, water, land, and people adapt to a changing climate. We follow an actionable science model, working directly with natural resource managers and other partners to create research and tools that can be applied directly to adaptation decisions. There is one National and nine reginal CASCs that serve the continental United States, Alaska, Hawai'i, the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands, and the U.S. Caribbean. Regional CASCS are federal-university partnerships made up of consortiums of academic, Tribal, and non-profit institutions. Learn more about the CASCs>>
Questions?
