UMaine Ph.D. candidate receives Shackleton Academic Scholarship

University of Maine graduate student Dulcinea Groff has been selected to receive a 2017 Shackleton Academic Scholarship.

Groff, a doctoral candidate and NSF IGERT Fellow in ecology and environmental science, is one of five recipients from around the world to receive the annual award. The scholarship is given to graduate students who are pursuing research in the natural or social sciences in the South Atlantic and Falkland Islands.

Groff, who has already completed three expeditions to the Falkland Islands, is examining the impact of sea-birds on the tussac grasslands around the island’s coast. Tussac grasslands are the breeding grounds for some of the southern hemisphere’s largest and most important seabird and marine mammal populations. Assessing the impact of seabird population on these environments will have useful implications for agriculture generally and for Falkland farmers whose lands include tussac grasses, according to a press release issued by the Shackleton Scholarship Fund.

The Shackleton Scholarship Fund was created in 1995 to commemorate renowned explorers Sir Ernest Shackleton and his son, Edward Shackleton, and to stimulate research in the South Atlantic.

More information about the Shackleton Scholarship is online.