HOUGHTON — Bees are dying, and Cindy Fiser wants to know why. Now the federal Environmental Protection Agency is helping her look for answers.
Fiser, a fourth-year applied ecology and environmental sciences major in Michigan Technological University’s School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, has been named a winner of the EPA’s Greater Research Opportunities Undergraduate Fellowship. The award provides financial support as well as a summer internship with the EPA at one of three locations.
In Fiser’s case, Colorado will be her home for the next 12 weeks. There, she will get to lead her own research project, a study of bees, focusing on alternative treatments to pesticides and herbicides, such as native predators and grass buffers around areas of agriculture.
“Pesticides and herbicides may harm the environment by potentially contaminating native pollinators or predators and their habitat on site, as well as the surrounding rivers and streams,” Fiser said. She is hoping alternative treatment approaches will help bring back the diminishing bee population.
For the past three years, Fiser has worked with Michigan Tech doctoral student Colin Phifer as a research field assistant. She traveled with Phifer to Wisconsin and Brazil. Phifer also studies bees, more specifically how “land use change associated with bioenergy feedstocks impacts both birds and native bees.” This work prepared Fiser for her EPA research project.
To read the rest of this story, click on https://techcentury.com/2016/06/16/michigan-tech-student-wins-grant-to-study-bee-decline/
