Planning Grant: Strategic planning of The Pinelands Research Institute

An award is made to the Pinelands Research Institute to support the establishment and initial activities of the Institute Advisory Board and development of a 10-year strategic plan for the Institute. These funds will help bring together a group of scholars, stakeholders and community members, all dedicated to research and education aimed at understanding and protecting the unique pine barrens ecosystem in New Jersey. The project will support education, enrichment, and environmental conservation activities for all the citizens of southern New Jersey, from K-12 students through senior volunteers. Among the planned activities will be the first Institute Bioblitz, which will be held in September 2025. Pine barrens ecosystems are globally distributed but quite rare. The Pinelands of New Jersey are a highly unique and preserved pine barrens ecosystem sandwiched in the middle of two of the largest urban centers on earth (New York City and Philadelphia). Indeed, the Pinelands National Reserve encompasses 1.1 million acres of minimally developed forest making it especially valuable for research. Currently, there is no other residential, terrestrial biological research station in all of New Jersey, and the newly established Pinelands Research Institute will fill a critical research need by providing a residential and remote facility for both fundamental and applied ecological research in a distinctly valuable and rare ecosystem. The Institute is expected to make critical contributions to seminal research in areas, such as terrestrial, soil and forest ecology, the evolution of rare and endemic species, fire management and conservation, pine barrens hydrology, and anthropogenic influences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.