While most Smith Lab students conduct their research in Colorado’s shortgrass steppe, Nico spends his summers within the montane grasslands of Glacier National Park in Montana.

During his first project, Nico led an extensive plant survey across the park. He compared the results to a decades-old dataset, allowing him to understand long-term changes in biodiversity and the contributing effects of elevation and land-use. This informed a second project: studying bison reintroduction into the Blackfeet Nation tribal lands.

Nico and his Blackfeet collaborators were recently awarded an NSF grant to study how these montane grasslands will respond to reintroduced bison grazing over the next three years. Stay tuned!