Massachusetts
List of Sustainability-Focused Extension Programs
Program: RiverSmart Communities
Institution: University of Massachusetts
Category: Land, Water
Range: Regional
Description: The RiverSmart Communities program combines social and river science, institutional and policy research, and community outreach at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to research and address river floods in New England. It is our vision that river management can restore the environmental integrity of rivers while ensuring that New England communities thrive in a world where floods naturally occur. To make this vision possible, our work aims to help New England’s communities become river-smart.
A key goal is to offer ideas and tools that can be used by people and groups across New England – land and river managers, riverside property owners, policy makers, government agency staff, community leaders, grass-roots activists, and others – so they can creatively build and advocate for systems that work for their own states and communities.
Program Offerings: Face-to-face trainings, Website, Information
Program: UMass Clean Energy Extension
Institution: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Category: Energy
Range: Regional
Description: The UMass Clean Energy Extension provides a resource to reduce market barriers and accelerate the adoption of clean energy for Massachusetts cities and towns, businesses, institutions, and others. The extension provides technical support and applied research to advance technical, economic, and policy solutions to advance clean energy in Massachusetts.
Program Offerings: Website, Information, Technical Assistance, Applied Research
Program: University of Massachusetts Extension Vegetable Program
Institution: University of Massachusetts
Category: Land, Air Quality/ Climate Change, Food, Water
Range: Massachusetts statewide
Description: The Vegetable Team provides both research and educational programs for a diverse and thriving vegetable industry in Massachusetts and the region. We work with other New England Vegetable Extension programs to produce the New England Vegetable Management Guide (www.nevegetable.org). With this group and the New England Vegetable and Berry Growers Association, we organize the New England Vegetable and Fruit Conference (http://newenglandvfc.org/), the region’s premier conference for vegetable producers, as well as other educational programs. We conduct on-farm research and demonstrations as well as applied research at the University of Massachusetts Crops Research and Education Center in South Deerfield Massachusetts. We publish Vegetable Notes, which provides growers with weekly information throughout the growing season on pest and crop conditions, IPM techniques and recommendations.
Program Offerings: Face-to-face trainings, Website, Information
