Student Grant Program
About the Grant
Each year, the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation awards a $1000 grant to a graduate student to help with field and lab work on their research project. If you are a graduate student interested in high-elevation, five-needle pines and need a little extra cash to finish your project, please submit a proposal for possible funding by the WPEF. Proposals are due by the end of January.
Proposal Requirements
The Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundations annually offers a research grant of $1000 to an undergraduate who is writing an undergraduate thesis or graduate student (MSc or PhD) conducting research on whitebark pine.*
Relevant areas of research include, but are not limited to:
- Threats to whitebark pine, including mountain pine beetle, white pine blister rust, successional replacement, and climate change (only in whitebark ecosystems)
- Interactions with wildlife, such as Clark’s nutcracker or other birds, red squirrels and grizzly bears
- Restoration strategies for whitebark pine, including both field operations and nursery seedling production
- Ecosystem level impacts of whitebark pine die off
- Social or policy aspects of whitebark pine decline and restoration, including wilderness issues
Grant recipients are encouraged to present their research findings at a subsequent WPEF annual science meeting and are expected to publish a research summary in our bi-annual journal Nutcracker Notes.
* While the WPEF is concerned about all five-needled pines, we are focusing this grant just on whitebark pine.
Previous Awardees
- 2019 – Iain Robert Reid: Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) recovery: use of assisted migration and rust resistance in long-term restoration efforts
- 2018 – Michael Howe: Is whitebark pine more amenable to mountain pine beetle attack behavior than historical hosts?
- 2017 – Kiah Allen: Determine the level of hybridization and introgression of the hybrid pine stem rust Cronartium x flexili and to assess its level of fitness
- 2016 – Maeghan Rochner: Past, present, and future climate change and forest dynamics in a high-elevation whitebark pine ecosystem in Wyoming
- 2015 – Colin Maher: Does whitebark pine have a refuge from mountain pine beetle at treeline?
- 2014 – None
- 2013 – Zolton Bair: Identification of blister rust resistance genes on whitebark pine to facilitate breeding and restoration and the Nutcracker Notes Project Report by Zolton Bair
- 2012 – Signe Lierfallom: Evaluating the effects of seed source mortality on whitebark pine regeneration dynamics after stand-replacing fire