Biodiversity Center Mission
Biodiversity is declining rapidly across the globe. Science forms the keystone to understanding and conserving this crisis of diversity loss. Our mission is to investigate and document biological diversity at scales ranging from local to global, and to synthesize and disseminate diversity information to promote comprehension, appreciation, and conservation of biological resources. The contextual basis for biodiversity studies straddles three temporal scale of (1) historical, (2) contemporaneous, and (3) future/predictive. Our longer-term vision is to continue to foster and further collaborative efforts, including research and grant proposals, within the core research areas that contribute to overall CBS goals.
Biodiversity Center is a network of faculty members and associated students, as well as collaborating researchers and institutions both domestic and international. Members work collaboratively and independently, across our four primary core research areas of
- Systematics and evolution
- Ecology and conservation
- Human-wildlife conflict and mitigation
- Karst science and climate issues.
Our most important function as a center is to emphasize, support, and integrate research, both basic and applied, with undergraduate and graduate students. The student-faculty research relationship has been and will continue to be central to the goals of this center. CBS faculty will continue to
- Seek external and internal grants and contracts to support faculty-student research in core areas.
- Work to increase the number of Master’s and Honors Undergraduate students.
- Present more research at prominent national and international meeting, and publish more research.
The Center serves as an information clearinghouse for professionals involved in biodiversity issues. We maintain links to museum collections focused on Kentucky biota, as well as more general databases relating to biodiversity and biogeography.
.
Some of the links on this page may require additional software to view.