Cooperative Agreement for CESU-affiliated Partner with Colorado Plateau Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Fort Collins Science Center (FORT), in collaboration with the Columbia Environmental Research Center (CERC), and Colorado Water Science Center (COWSC), is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for enhancing effective science communication capacity for the USGS Grand Canyon Uranium Project. Effectively communicating science concerning potential routes of exposure, including wind-borne dusts, surface and groundwater, soil, sediment, and food-chain pathways will improve our ability to describe risk at landscape scales and at various levels within the ecosystems of the Southwest. Understanding the risk of exposure from uranium exploration and mining is crucial for managing the resources of the Grand Canyon watershed, such as the Colorado River. Effective communication of science to non-scientists is a challenge. Many scientists have difficulty recognizing that terms, ideas, and thoughts that they are attempting to relay are fraught with jargon, technical details, and concepts that may be off-putting to the non-scientist. A scientist caught up in the complexities and fascination of their own research may have difficulty distilling their work into an interesting message where they covey the “so what” of their results, rather than the intricate details of how they accomplished the research. This cooperative project will expand USGS knowledge and use of communication methods to deliver actionable science to non-science audiences; this knowledge will be applied the Grand Canyon Region and adapted to be used in other scientific contexts. The new communication tools will increase exposure and thus impact of USGS’s work to society that will ultimately lead to our science being more societally relevant and included in more policy and management decisions.