Latest Montana State University Stories

Thread-like fungi that grow in soils at high elevations may play an important role in restoring whitebark and limber pine forests in Canada. Montana State University professor Cathy Cripps is looking for ways to use fungi to help pine seedlings get a strong start.Cripps' is working with resource managers and visitor relations staff from Waterton Lakes National Park (WLNP). She is part of a project that aims to restore fire to the national park, reduce the impact of noxious weeds and restore...

Wolves have caused elk in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to change their behavior and foraging habits so much so that herds are having fewer calves, mainly due to changes in their nutrition, according to a study published this week by Montana State University researchers.During winter, nearly all elk in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are losing weight, said Scott Creel, ecology professor at MSU, and lead author on the study which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of...

Paleoecological data reveal strong influence of vegetation changes on wildfire frequencyThe increase in warmer and drier climates predicted to occur under climate change scenarios has led many scientists to also predict a global increase in the number of wildfires. But a new study in the May issue of Ecological Monographs shows that in some cases, changes in the types of plants growing in an area could override the effects of climate change on wildfire frequency.Philip Higuera of Montana...

Michael Knell carried a 75-million-year-old turtle into Bozeman Deaconess hospital recently, then laid it carefully on the bed that slides into the CT scanner.Hardly an ordinary patient, the turtle fossil was only the second in the world found with eggs inside it, said Knell, a Montana State University graduate student in earth sciences. His turtle (from the genus Adocus) came from the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Kanab, Utah. The previously described turtle, which was found...

Arsenic may be tough, but scientists have found a Yellowstone National Park alga that's tougher.The alga -- a simple one-celled algae called Cyanidioschyzon -- thrives in extremely toxic conditions and chemically modifies arsenic that occurs naturally around hot springs, said Tim McDermott, professor in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences at Montana State University.Cyanidioschyzon could someday help reclaim arsenic-laden mine waste and aid in everything from space...

A new Montana State University study says that weather, especially in late winter and early spring, is getting warmer in northwestern North America.The research, published in the January issue of "Climatic Change," found that the coldest daily temperatures recorded in Bozeman, Mont., and Coldstream, British Columbia, have occurred less often over the past several decades. Extreme cold nighttime temperatures have become less frequent, and extreme warm nighttime temperatures have...

Ed Adams, a civil engineering professor used to spend time studying the nature of avalanches after setting them off with dynamite from a nearby shack on a steep slope at Bridger Bowl in Montana.Now, Adams, 58, has traded in his dynamite for a more sophisticated approach: using a $2 million lab aimed at gaining a better understanding of how avalanches occur, and more importantly how to predict them.Based at Montana State University, the so-called Subzero Research Facility was funded by the...

The Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University is now home to one of the largest and most sophisticated motion-based driving simulators in the United States.The $915,000 simulator uses real vehicle bodies mounted on a motion platform and surrounded by a 240-degree arc of projector screens to more accurately simulate the experience of being behind the wheel, said WTI's simulator manager Suzy Lassacher. Funding for the simulator came from a variety of federal and private...

A team led by a Montana State University professor has found a fungus that produces a new type of diesel fuel, which they say holds great promise.Calling the fungus' output "myco-diesel," Gary Strobel and his collaborators describe their initial observations in the November issue of Microbiology.The discovery may offer an alternative to fossil fuels, said Strobel, MSU professor of plant sciences and plant pathology. The find is even bigger, he said, than his 1993 discovery of fungus...

High-tech imaging reveals inside of duck-billed dinosaur skullsPaleontologists have long debated the function of the strange, bony crests on the heads of the duck-billed dinosaurs known as lambeosaurs. The structures contain incredibly long, convoluted nasal passages that loop up over the tops of their skulls.Scientists at the University of Toronto, Ohio University and Montana State University now have used CT-scanning to look inside these mysterious crests and reconstruct the brains and...