**ARCHIVED POST **
The Native Plant Society of Texas has awarded a grant to support research on the effect of drought on native oaks to Caitlyn Cooper, a doctoral student at Texas A&M University.
Recent unprecedented drought has resulted in the death of over 300 million trees in Texas. The research grant will be used to support Cooper’s research investigating the effects of prolonged drought on various native species of oaks. The results of these studies will be incorporated into the larger framework of tree mortality and wildlife food preferences and will improve the understanding of interactions between drought, wildlife and oaks, which will have increasing relevance in a world of increasing drought, carbon dioxide and global warming.
The Society awards its Ann Miller Gonzalez Research Grants annually to a graduate and an undergraduate for work on native plant related subjects. This year’s graduate student research recipient is pursuing a PhD in Agronomy at Texas A&M University. Since entering graduate school she has maintained a 4.0 GPA, and the research grant becomes the tenth award, scholarship or grant she has accumulated in pursuit of her academic goals.
As an undergraduate student trainee in the Student Career Experience Program for the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, Caitlyn Cooper assisted people with conservation planning and range planting geared toward restoration and management of native plants and habitats. During her undergraduate studies at Tarleton State University she was a member of the plant identification team and became its coach while she worked on her Master’s thesis on the physiology of warm-season perennial legumes native to or naturalized in Texas.
Cooper said she hoped one day to be a plant physiologist with her own lab:
I grew up on a farm and cattle ranch near Jacksboro and as a kid I enjoyed walking around and looking at plants in our pastures. My high school agricultural science teachers helped further my interest in native plants while I was a member of the FFA plant identification, forage judging and wildlife management teams. I took classes as an undergraduate range management student with a couple of professors who would later become some of my master’s advisors, and they sparked my interest in pursuing a graduate degree. My master’s advisors inspired me to continue my education by entering a doctoral program.
Cooper will give a presentation on her research during the Fall Symposium in Texarkana.
**ARCHIVED POST**
**ARCHIVED POST LINKS & PICTURES MAY NOT WORK**
**ARCHIVED POST AUTHOR: rkamper
