- Holly successfully defended her MS research and will graduate in December. She uncovered a lot of different ecological, social and economic barriers to beaver reintroduction across CA. Her research was really well received!
- Bryan started in on his field work for his honors project comparing native (sycamore) and non-native (fig) in stream leaf decomposition and potential impacts to the benthic macroinvertebrate communities. He received a highly competitive Student Award for Research and Creativity to continue his work in the Spring. He presented a summary of his work to date at the ERTH student poster session in early December.
- Kaylie collected soils in Drakesbad Meadow and set up her seed bank germination plots in the greenhouse. Over the semester she has been watching them grow! So many plants coming up in the plots.
- Mikala has been busily crunching her fuels data. She and Amanda collected fuel loading data across 32 dozer lines, in six different wildfire footprints across northern California in summer 2022.
- Cassie finished her weekly bird surveys at Butte Creek Ecological Preserve and entered all the historic bird sampling data so she can compare diversity pre- and post-Camp Fire.
- Sabrina collected soil samples in Drakesbad and has spent the semester working on analyzing their carbon content. She spent some time over in the Regenerative Agriculture Demonstration (RAD) lab at the Chico State farm, learning how to prep the samples for C:N analysis.
- Kristen has been reading a lot of thesis drafts! And she was awarded a year long sabbatical for next year. One of the projects she'll be working on is a newly funded Cal Fire project developing research protocols surrounding prescribed fire in foothills regions of California - with work centering around the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve. In addition to this, she'll be finishing up some work on the dozer line research as well as Drakesbad Meadow restoration.
Another semester has come to an end! And, like other semesters, lots of exciting things have happened this Fall as well.
Time again for another end of semester update -- and like others, it's been busy and very successful!
In no particular order, here's what happened:
Here's what happened this past semester in the Applied Ecology lab --
Well it's Fall again - and the Applied Ecology lab has finally set up shop in the Science Building on campus (thanks to all the packing and moving by Claire Monahan!). Here's some recent news:
Wow. It's been a long time since an update, but there's been a lot happening these last few weeks. In no particular order:
Haven't made an update in a long time, but yesterday was a fantastic day for the Applied Ecology lab! Lexi submitted a manuscript of her sudden oak death risk modeling to Forest Science. We have been working on converting her thesis to a manuscript for a few months, so it's fantastic to finally get that submitted!
Classes are winding down and field work is about to begin! This summer I'll be doing field work in Drakesbad Meadow, Lassen National Park as well as at the ORIDE site at Gerber Reservoir. In addition, I'll be scouting out new field sites in Northern California.
In other news, I have recently joined the Board of Directors for the Northern California Botanists. Excited to be part of this very active group of botanists and plant ecologists! Finally, the lab will have a new addition starting in Fall 2019. Matt Mayer will be joining us - he is finishing up his undergraduate degree in Environmental Biology at Pacific University. His research will be in fire ecology. Excited to have him join the lab! It was a big week! Hannah's poster on Post-fire Vegetation Recovery Trajectory won the People's Choice Award for Graduate/Faculty research at the College of Natural Sciences Poster Session! And on Thursday Hannah presented her preliminary results at the Center for Water and the Environment Student Research Forum. Nice work Hannah!
Hannah just got back from presenting her masters research at the SERCAL conference in Santa Barbara. Her poster was titled Post-fire Plant Trajectory and Fuel Break Restoration. And after a really rainy and cool spring, she and Claire have started the second year of data collection.
Hannah and Lexi presented their master's research at the NorCal Botany symposium at Chico State. Great job Ladies!
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