Maine EPSCoR Spring Newsletter Highlights McGill’s NSF ‘Barracuda’ Research

Brian McGillBrian McGill’s Barracuda (Biodiversity and Rural Response to Climate Change Using Data Analysis) project is highlighted in the Spring 2022 edition of the Maine EPSCoR newsletter. The research is funded by a four-year, $4 million (RII Track-2 FEC) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). McGill, whose career passion has been to combine environmental data and Big Data (large, complex, fast-growing data that cannot be efficiently stored or processed by traditional methods), is hoping the research will answer critical environmental conservation and global change questions. UMaine Ph.D. student Bailey McLaughlin, is conducting research with McGill on the project. Working within terrestrial ecosystems, McLaughlin is helping to aggregate data for target organisms (e.g., trees, birds, agricultural crops) as well as climate and data layers that will be used to help create short-term forecasts.