Fran tenBensel Benne | Agronomy and Horticulture
Gwendŵr Meredith joined the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, working jointly with the School of Natural Resources, August 16 as a social-ecological rangeland scientist and assistant professor within the Center for Resilience in Agricultural Working Landscapes. She has a 60% research and 40% teaching appointment.
Meredith is currently writing papers, looking for grant opportunities and recruiting graduate students for her lab. She is co-teaching Natural Resources/Agronomy 245 Grassland Ecology and Management with agronomy and horticulture colleague Cheryl Dunn this spring semester.
Her research focuses on information diffusion and collaboration among land managers in rangelands. Meredith said she studies rangelands, and grazing lands more broadly, because they cover a huge portion of the United States and provide a wealth of provisioning, supporting, regulating and cultural ecosystem services.
“My research aim is to bring together multistakeholder perspectives that manage grazing lands for all types of ecosystem services, thereby increasing trust amongst stakeholders while promoting the resilience of our grazing lands,” she said.
Originally from Denton, Texas, Meredith attended Indiana University where she earned a bachelor’s degree in animal behavior, ecology and conservation. After graduation, she spent several months as a research assistant in South Africa before attending graduate school at Utah State University. She spent more than five years studying cross-jurisdictional collaboration on public lands and received a doctorate in human dimensions of ecosystem science and management.
Before coming to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Meredith was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Idaho and worked closely with the USDA-ARS Long-term Agroecosystem Research Network.
“I came to Nebraska for the opportunity to study grassland social-ecological systems, particularly stakeholder collaborative management and perceptions of land use and/or land cover change in the Great Plains,” she said.
In her spare time, Meredith likes to combine dog walks with learning the names of grassland plants and insects that are new to her. She also appreciates evenings inside, knitting with her two cats.
