Rodewald Receives 2007 OARDC Junior Faculty Research Award; Wildlife Ecologist Tackles Emerging Conservation Issues

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Amanda Rodewald, an associate professor in Ohio State University’s School of Environment and Natural Resources (SENR), received the 2007 Distinguished Junior Faculty Research Award today (April 19) at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center’s (OARDC) 2007 Annual Research Conference in Columbus.

A prominent wildlife ecologist whose work addresses emerging issues in conservation, Rodewald seeks to identify the ecological mechanisms that govern multi-scale responses of animal communities to disturbances, especially those resulting from forest-management activities and urbanization.

The annual research award — consisting of a plaque, $1,000 to the winner and $3,000 to the operating expense account of one of the winner’s OARDC research projects — recognizes outstanding achievements by an OARDC faculty member at the rank of assistant professor or associate professor.

Also presented at the conference was the Distinguished Senior Faculty Research Award, which goes to an OARDC faculty member at the rank of professor.

OARDC is the research arm of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.

Rodewald joined OARDC in 2000 as an assistant professor. She was promoted last year to her current position.

In her work she applies a research model that focuses on two main study systems. The first examines multi-scale influences of urban development on wildlife in riparian forests. The second looks at multi-scale impacts of forest management on forest bird communities. Both systems help Rodewald and her students uncover local ecological mechanisms producing landscape-level patterns.

As a part of these efforts, Rodewald is the principal investigator on two large-scale experiments: one manipulating silvicultural treatments in five Appalachian states, the other manipulating exotic shrub cover in central Ohio.

Recently she has employed her research in urban ecology to facilitate partnerships among scientists and decision-makers to promote the use of ecological science in public policy decisions. She teamed with social scientists last year to develop the SENR Environmental Policy Fellowship Program, proposing a service-learning course that focuses on the consequences of urban growth to ecosystems and to environmental policy in Ohio.

She has been an associate editor of The Auk, the leading international journal of ornithology, and of The Journal of Wildlife Management, the top international journal in its field, and in 2005 was selected as one of six invited speakers from more than 100 nominations for inclusion in a University of Arizona seminar series titled “A Showcase of Promising Young Scientists in Natural Resources.”

Since joining Ohio State, Rodewald’s research program has generated more than $5 million in funding at the state and federal levels, including competitive grants from the National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has produced, among her many publications, 30 peer-reviewed articles in top journals and three book chapters. She advises graduate students and has a strong record of mentoring young women in science.

She has a Ph.D. in ecology from Pennsylvania State University, a master’s degree in zoology from the University of Arkansas, and a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from the University of Montana.

Focused on a theme of “Ohio’s Future in Renewable Energy and the Bioeconomy,” the OARDC research conference featured nine scientist speakers from Ohio State, OARDC, the Battelle Polymer Center, the Ohio Bioproducts Innovation Center and the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority.

Opening and closing comments came from Bobby Moser, dean of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences; OARDC Director Steve Slack; and OARDC Associate Director David Benfield.

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Links: OARDC, http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/. School of Environment and Natural Resources (including a “Faculty & Staff” link for Rodewald), http://snr.osu.edu/.