Colorado State University to become Western region hub for climate-change research.

• Author: Reuteman, Rob
• Position: SCIENCE

Several new developments add momentum to Colorado State University's growing reputation as a hub for climate-change research.

In October, the U.S. Department of the Interior selected CSU as home to one of eight new Climate Science Centers designed to put research in the hands of public and private resource managers so they can better mitigate the negative effects of climate change.

In early November, CSU was named by the National Science Foundation as the leader of a new research and education program to train the next generation of water scientists, granting $2.75 million over five years to the effort.

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In mid-November, United Nations officials traveled to the Fort Collins campus for the North American launch of its Decade for Deserts, designed to focus attention on how worsening drought patterns and human impacts turn productive acreage into barren dryland.

With its new Climate Science Center, CSU will lead a consortium of nine universities in the north-central region of the country: the University of Colorado, Colorado School of Mines, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Wyoming, Montana State University, University of Montana, Kansas State University and Iowa State University.

The center, expected to be operating by 2011, will be housed in CSU's $13 million Science and Technology Center, which opened in April 2009. The climate center will host up to eight federal scientists as well as post-doctoral fellows who will work with regional land, water, fish and wildlife managers, providing them with the latest tools to adapt their work to the findings of climate science.

"We'll look at the impacts of climate in the north-central part...