News

Ben Colteaux, Ph.D., in the Integrative Life Sciences program holds a snapping turtle in the field. (Photo credit: Courtesy of Team Snapper)

Study shows commercial harvest of snapping turtles is leading to population decline

Oct. 25, 2017

More than 200,000 wild snapping turtles were harvested across the United States in 2012 and 2014, a dramatic increase from the nearly 50,000 harvested cumulatively from 1999 to 2011.

A sunrise over Crown Point at Columbia River Gorge. Students of Daniel McGarvey, Ph.D., used widely available climate data to model fish distributions in the waterway.

Students demonstrate validity of models that use free, publicly accessible climate data

Oct. 4, 2017

As concern about the consequences of climate change grows, researchers are thinking hard about the data and models that drive their understanding of these changes. Graduate students in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center for Environmental Studies recently contributed to this effort by proving that free, publicly accessible climate data can predict habitat quality within river networks with as much accuracy as data from more complex and expensive sources.