College of the Environment and Life Sciences

10/28/2026

Our CELS Dean’s office and administrative staff went all out for this year’s Halloween Door Decorating Contest, and now we need YOUR help crowning the People’s Choice winner.

Swipe through the festive submissions and comment your favorite! 🏆

10/27/2026

This beautiful bobcat was captured walking along a stone wall in Washington County by one of URI master’s student Maya Silver’s trail cameras. Maya is in the Biological and Environmental Sciences program studying Ecology and Ecosystem Science.

She placed 52 cameras across Washington County to supplement the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management's statewide camera survey (~160 cameras). Combined with community science reports, the data will help estimate how many bobcats live in Rhode Island.

Her project, a collaboration with RIDEM, builds on research by Dr. Laken Ganoe, now RIDEM’s furbearer biologist. During her PhD at URI with Dr. Brian Ge**er, Laken found that bobcat occupancy is stable or increasing across the state. Now Maya is carrying that work forward to assess the current populations status in the same lab, URI's Quest Lab, with Dr. Kathleen Carroll!

10/27/2026

Why do leaves change color, and what will this fall’s weather mean for the show? URI Extension Forester Christopher Riely joined WPRI 12's Beyond the Forecast to explain the science behind the color, how recent weather is shaping this year’s foliage, and where to go for a great view.

Chris is a forestry specialist in our Department of Natural Resources Science and part of URI Cooperative Extension. His day job is helping the people who own and care for Rhode Island’s woods: landowners, land trusts, and partners at the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. He’s a Certified Forester and Arborist, co-coordinates the Rhode Island Woodland Partnership, and studies how to manage forests for a changing climate, including test plantings of oak species that may handle southern New England’s future conditions better.

In other words, he thinks about these trees all year, not just when they turn red!

Christopher Riely, a forestry extension specialist at URI, joined us to talk about leaf peeping.

10/27/2026

How hard does a bat have to work to survive in a changing forest?

URI's Travis Bayer studied wild greater spear-nosed bats in Panamá, fitting them with tiny sensors that tracked their heart rate, movement, and location throughout the night.

His findings show that measurements of body acceleration can reliably predict how much energy bats expend, giving researchers a new, less-invasive way to investigate how environmental changes may affect wildlife.

Bringing technology like this into conservation is also the focus of Pathos Wildlife, a nonprofit organization Bayer founded.

As forests change and habitats become fragmented, understanding these energetic costs could help researchers better predict how bats respond to shifting resources and environmental pressures.

This research was conducted with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). At URI, Bayer works with Dr. Sarah Kienle in the CEAL Lab.

Read more in the comments below!

📸: Photos 1 and 2 by José Gabriel Martínez-Fonseca, photos 2 and 3 by Teage O'Mara.

10/26/2026

In coastal communities around the world, a day’s catch means food on the table, income, and a way of life.

But when distant-water fishing fleets move into waters that small-scale fishers depend on, local fishing communities can lose access to vital resources, threatening livelihoods and food security.

URI’s Austin Humphries and Lauren Josephs M’17 are working to change that. As part of a new U.S. Department of State-funded project, they’ll use AI and vessel-tracking data to identify potential illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing activity in the Philippines and Kenya, helping inform enforcement efforts.

“This project connects fisheries science directly to food security and to the livelihoods of coastal communities,” Humphries said. At URI, he is the Chair of the Department of Fisheries, Animal and Veterinary Sciences.

The work is part of a multimillion-dollar award led by Mississippi State University through the new Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Fish, which aims to strengthen global food systems and food security. URI is the only New England institution represented in the project.

Read more in the comments!

📸 Katie Nelson

10/25/2026

Christopher Riely, a forestry extension specialist at URI, joined us to talk about leaf peeping.

10/23/2026

Learning in the field starts in the first semester in CELS!

Students in NRS 101, the Department of Natural Resources Science’s first-year seminar, spent last Sunday morning doing a beach survey at Moonstone Beach in South Kingstown. One highlight was removing a large trap from the beach.

Students worked in teams to collect and record trash. Their data now feeds the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup database, which researchers use to understand marine debris and improve what can be learned from volunteer cleanups.

NRS 101 helps Wildlife Conservation Biology and Environmental Science and Management majors connect with faculty, explore career paths, and begin hands-on work early.

📸: Madalyn Stoltz

10/23/2026

So proud of our faculty for helping young advocates around the globe!

Our free Youth Leadership Training is back this October and November, and the lineup is 🔥. Over four live sessions, you’ll learn from ocean scientists, campaign strategists, journalists, fishers, and youth leaders who are already making waves:

🌍 Ocean conservation & the climate crisis: Dr. Elizabeth Mendenhall (University of Rhode Island) and Thomas Csillag Finger (University of São Paulo, Youth Advisory Council alum)

📣 Campaign communications: Kristen Grimm (Spitfire Strategies) and Leif Coorlim (The CNN Freedom Project)

🗓️ Planning events & campaigns: Chi Agbayani (ocean-climate youth leader, YAC alum) and Sally Sivewright (Guardians of the Deep)

🤝 Campaign organizing in partnership: Arianna Abdul-Nour (Island Innovation) and Linda Behnken (Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association)

You’ll come away with real skills: crafting messages that land, building a team, finding funding, and growing collective power. You don’t need any experience, just a passion for our ocean.

📍 Free, online, open to youth worldwide
⏰ All sessions 1–2pm UTC

Save your spot: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Zzht7zuzS1Svy7W6koHLfQ #/registration

10/23/2026

From seed to silvopasture!

This week, students in Professor Laura Meyerson’s restoration ecology class took part in a seed-cleaning workshop for native species, separating seed from pod, husk, and fluff for chestnut, tulip poplar, oak, black walnut, maple, goldenrod, Joe-pye w**d, cattail, and common milkw**d.

Students gathered much of the seed in the field with Silvermoon LaRose, assistant director of the Tomaquag Museum, and around URI’s Agronomy Farm. A few tulip poplar seeds came from the President’s lawn, with permission from Mary Parlange.

Next, the seeds will spend the winter in cold storage in Professor Meyerson’s greenhouse (a process called stratification that mimics winter and prepares them to sprout) and be potted up in spring. Eventually they’ll be planted at Peckham Farm, both in the silvopasture and in new plantings developed with the Tomaquag Museum, Rhode Island’s only Indigenous-led museum.

The work is part of an NSF-funded project exploring how Traditional Ecological Knowledge, the generations of Indigenous land stewardship, can help restore worn-out farmland.

10/22/2026

A deer pokes its nose toward the lens. A coyote pauses, ears pricked up. A fisher’s eyes flash in the dark. For URI master’s student Madalyn Stoltz, these fleeting moments are more than wildlife sightings. They’re valuable data points.

Working with Professor Kathleen Carroll in the Quest Lab, Stoltz leads URI’s participation in Snapshot USA, a national camera-trap program coordinated by the Smithsonian and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

The nationwide effort helps researchers understand where wildlife lives, how populations change, and how animals use different habitats.

This fall, motion-activated cameras are capturing wildlife at two Rhode Island sites: the 225-acre North Woods and a site in Little Compton, where Stoltz is also investigating how historic stone walls compare with natural features in supporting wildlife biodiversity.

Undergraduate students Isabella Noonan, Raven Szewczok, and Ava Watjko help with fieldwork and identify animals in the images.

Every image contributes to a free national dataset anyone can explore through the Smithsonian's Wildlife Insights!

Read more at the article linked in the comments!