Ph.D. student Madelyn Percy has been awarded a grant from the NSF Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) Science Across Virtual Institutes (SAVI) Program for her promising work in the Galapagos.
That’s an eight-letter acronym – so, what exactly is the CZO-SAVI Program?
The award provides funding for research on the critical zone, or “Earth’s outer skin,” where,
“complex interactions regulate the natural habitat and determine the availability of life-sustaining resources, including our food production and water quality.”
The critical zone is imperative for terrestrial life, yet, a distinct lack of research exists on “how physical, chemical, and biological processes in the Critical Zone are coupled and at what spatial and temporal scales.”
Percy’s work, “Pedogenesis in the tropics: The Galapagos as a natural laboratory,” will be conducted in the Galapagos Science Center, a jointly created facility with collaborative partner university, the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador.
Congratulations to Percy for her grant and research opportunity with the Galapagos Science Center on Isla San Cristobal. Her work strengthens Center’s commitment to studying environmental sustainability in the critical setting of the Galapagos archipelago.