Lab News

Fall 2022 roundup

12/6/2022

Another semester has come to an end! And, like other semesters, lots of exciting things have happened this Fall as well.

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.

We are looking forward to an exciting Spring semester, with at least two potential thesis defenses and spring data collection on dozer lines.

End of Spring 2022 semester!

5/25/2022

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:

Claire Monahan graduated this May, and was awarded the Excellence in Independent Research in Geological and Environmental Sciences. She's off to continue working in the field of Fire Science and we will miss her a lot!!
Matt submitted his thesis and graduated this May with his MS in Environmental Sciences. He was awarded a department award for Excellence in Graduate Research in Environmental Sciences. Back in January his poster at the Northern California Botanists symposium won first place in the student poster competition!
Natalie successfully completed her honors thesis on the interaction of drought and wildfire on Blue Oak. She presented her research at the College of Natural Sciences Poster Symposium and received third place in the undergraduate-faculty research category! She graduated with honors in the major in May.
Mikala has been busy developing her field protocol and determining where to sample this summer - there certainly isn't a shortage of recently burned sites across Northern California. She'll be busy collecting data starting at the end of this month.
Claire-Marie led a very successful Environmental Justice module in the Recovery of Altered Ecosystems course this spring. She began collecting her journaling and interview data and will start analyzing it this summer.
Kaylie was awarded two scholarships for her master's research: the Jokerst Field Botany award and a student research scholarship through the Northern California Botanists. She'll be out at Drakesbad Meadow collecting data this summer.
Holly completed all of her interviews and was also awarded a CWE student research scholarship! She will be working on analyzing her data and writing up her thesis this summer.
Cassie has been busy entering historical bird count data from BCEP and collecting her own data out there. She'll be collecting data this summer and will start analyzing in the Fall.
Hannah's paper finally came out! It was published in Madrono in the January-March 2022 issue.
Kristen just received a Research, Scholarly and Creative Activities award through Chico State to investigate the impact of wildfire on Drakesbad Meadow. In addition, she'll be helping out Mikala and Kaylie collect their data - and working with two new undergraduates who will join the lab: Amanda Shunk and Sabrina Nielson!

End of the semester update

12/18/2021

Here's what happened this past semester in the Applied Ecology lab --

Matt successfully defended his thesis research! He found that dozer lines impact the recovery of native vegetation and that the wider the dozer line, the higher likelihood of nonnative species. Look for his poster at the Northern California Botanists Symposium in January 2022
Claire presented her blue oak seedling regeneration research to an audience of ~100 people at the Annual Meeting of the Friends of the Chico State Herbarium. Her research was really well received!
Lab Alum Hannah presented her research on obligate seeders and dozer lines (along with Claire's prior research project) at the virtual 9th International Fire Ecology & Management Congress
Natalie experienced the joys of predawn sampling, and has started in on her honors work looking at the interactions of drought and wildfire on Blue Oak
Holly has started interviewing folks to get their take on the barriers to beaver reintroduction in California - one down and a bunch more to go!
Mikala has honed in on her thesis research topic: how dozer lines impact fuel loading. She's been really busy identifying dozer lines across northern California wildfire sites using aerial imagery. Excited to get out in the field to see what they look like on the ground.
The lab welcomed two new lab members this Fall - Kaylie Deluca (Interdisciplinary) and Cassie Corridoni (Interdisciplinary - Wildland Management). Kaylie will be studying the impacts of the Dixie Fire at our long term restoration site at Drakesbad Meadow in Lassen NP. Cassie will be studying the recovery of plants and birds post-Camp Fire at the Butte Creek Ecological Preserve
Kristen is getting ready to submit a (non-fire related!) proposal for some local endangered species work. And has been learning all about how to put together a virtual symposium with the entire Northern California Botanists board.

Start to another year

9/4/2021

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:

Kristen received ARI funding to examine temporal dynamics of dozer lines across northern California
Hannah's manuscript was accepted for publication in Madrono! Look for it in a future issue - hopefully later this Fall. Hannah also submitted an abstract to the 9th International Fire Ecology and Management Congress. She will (hopefully) be presenting on her thesis research as well as Claire's work on woody plant recovery in dozer lines.
Mikala Tator joined the lab this Fall. She came to Chico from Sonoma State, where she earned her undergrad degree in Biology. While there she did some research on sudden oak death and wildfire impacts on oak communities. For her master's she'll be examining vegetation recovery in dozer lines.
Natalie Pangilinan will be doing an honors research project in the lab this year. She will be investigating the impact of wildfire on the end of season and early growing season drought stress of Blue Oaks. Her study site will be within Upper Park where the Park Fire burned ~450 acres in July.
Holly has narrowed her thesis focus down to investigating barriers to beaver reintroduction in California. She will be interviewing different stakeholders next semester.
Be on the lookout for Claire's talk on post-fire Blue Oak regeneration that she'll be giving later this semester to the Friends of the Herbarium at Chico State
Matt is working hard on finishing up his thesis research, hopefully defending later this semester

Year end news

5/6/2021

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:

Max Claret (honors student) presented his research on changes in biodiversity within the Big Chico Creek watershed at the Center for Water and Environment student research symposium. He compared vegetation community cover in 1933 with current vegetation community cover and dominant species. Max was awarded a Student Research and Creativity award from the Honors Program in Spring 2021 to support his research!
Heather Pendleton (honors student) presented her research examining the seedbank composition at sites that have had manual fuel reduction with sites that have had an additional management of prescribed fire. She was awarded 2nd place for undergraduate research at the College of Natural Sciences Poster Session!
Claire Monahan (undergraduate researcher) has been super busy with her field work investigating potential differences in blue oak regeneration at sites that experienced wildfire, prescribed fire, no fire or are within a dozer line. She was awarded the 2021 Jokerst field botany award through the Chico State herbarium! She's got one more year so I'm excited to see where this research goes!
Matt Mayer (grad student) has finally been able to start collecting data for his master's research. He has sampled vegetation recovery at two dozer line sites created during the Carr Fire of 2018. Last year, Matt was awarded a student research award from the Center for Water and the Environment as well as a Student Research and Creativity award in Spring 2020 to help fund his research!
Hannah Weinberger (Envir Sci MS alum) revised and resubmitted a manuscript based on her masters research investigating post-fire recovery in dozer lines.

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!

And last night was the Student Research Competition. Claire presented her research on post-fire woody plant regeneration to a broad audience of faculty judges and students. She was confident and gave a fantastic presentation -- and the judges awarded her 3rd place for her group. As this was research she conducted when she was a freshman, we are so excited to see what comes next! Congrats Claire!

End of the semester news

5/15/2019

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!

Congrats Hannah!

5/2/2019

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!

SERCAL 2019

4/21/2019

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.