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.