UMass Climate Center loses federal funding, faces potential closure

AMHERST — The Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is facing potential closure next month because of extensive federal funding cuts.

The center is part of a consortium of nine Climate Adaptation Science Centers in the country and is managed by the U.S. Geological Survey. These centers bridge the gap between science and communities in the face of climate change, providing research, education, and strategic adaptation plans for local communities grappling with coastal flooding, invasive plants, and forestry management.

Bethany Bradley, co-director of the UMass center, remembers the writing on the wall back in May that funding might be cut by Congress. At that time, the Trump administration was focusing on funding cuts on the USGS ecosystem mission area, which includes climate adaptation science centers.

Bethany Bradley is a professor of environmental conservation at UMass and co-director of the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center. (Don Treeger / Special to The Republican, File)The Republican

Bradley said the results were actually hopeful back in July, as the House increased the Climate Center's budget by 5%, and the Senate kept funding the same, while many other areas were cut. At the time, Bradley said that the Climate Center felt heard by Congress.

Last week, though, the center received news from their USGS colleagues that the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the executive branch, is prohibiting any spending on anything other than federal salaries and lab animals.

This directly affects the center's work, as it is done through cooperative agreements, partnerships between USGS scientists and scientists at UMass and other universities, as well as nongovernmental organizations. It's a model that typically allows for the leveraging of expertise by subcontracting university scientists and scientific organizations, but it now has been shut down.

The center consists of four directors and administrators, nine positions in academic leadership, seven staff members, eight research fellows, and numerous specialized investigative experts.

The center already has let go its communications manager and put a halt to any new hires for postdoctoral research fellows looking to research climate adaptation for the region, Bradley said.

A Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center staffer, who did not want to be identified, shows a poster of the effects that flooding had in the New England area after Hurricane Irene. This work will not be possible if the proposed federal funding is cut. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook

Instead of research, staff and leadership are pivoting to more teaching, Bradley said.

While many grad students are losing their funding, admissions to related graduate programs have either slowed down or stopped altogether at the university, Bradley said. She reports that five graduate positions at UMass are no longer supported by the center, along with one at the University of Vermont and one at Cornell University, two of the center's consortium partners.

This is "bad for the future of science, because we're stopping the next generation from becoming scientists," she said.

The center has not received any stop-work orders on 170 projects in progress, as Bradley believes that existing funding through UMass and USGS likely will still be carried out. There were, however, about half a dozen new projects that were reviewed by USGS that will no longer be able to be funded.

All hope is not lost yet, though.

"This is totally uncharted territory for any of us," said Bradley. "What's happened right now is Congress has made a budget and the executive branch has said, 'Nope, we don't feel like spending on the things that you told us to spend on,' and that puts us in this place where it's like, 'OK, we need to wait.'"

The federal budget process is finished by the end of September, as its fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

Meanwhile, the Climate Center is looking at options outside of the USGS, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where there is overlap with UMass research.

"We're in the crosshairs of a battle between the congressional branch and the executive branch, and I hope that Congress will stand up and say we should still have the power to do what the Constitution has given us the power to do."

Bradley's hope is that, despite this current situation, by the time future scientists are ready to step into the more senior roles, that science and the ecosystems as a whole will be in a much safer place.

"I'm serious when I say, we're not dead yet," Bradley said.

Read the original article on MassLive .