Carmen Tubbesing – Battles Lab

Field trip to research sites spurred important management conversations

Carmen Tubbesing Lab News October 25, 2017January 5, 2018

Carmen Tubbesing and John Battles helped organize a field trip to the Last Chance site of the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project (SNAMP) to discuss recent research results with a diverse group. There were over 30 attendees, including local Forest Service district rangers and foresters, Cooperative Extension advisors, non-profit groups, media, lumber production industry representatives, and other local stakeholders.

We visited sites that were treated with fuel reduction treatments, monitored, burned in the 2013 American Fire, and re-measured. This provided a great opportunity to learn about how fuel treatments affect forests and fire resiliency. The group discussed on-the-ground applications of forest research and the challenges that go along with it.

This field trip was possible because of the Graduate Students in Extension (GSE) fellowship, which awarded Carmen a fellowship for her to broaden the audience reached by her research results. Susie Kocher, a UC Cooperate Extension Advisor and Carmen’s GSE mentor, was instrumental in planning and executing the field trip, as was Vic Lyon, District Ranger of the American River Ranger District.

Carmen, Dr. Battles, and Vic Lyon presenting to the group

Carmen presenting results of her regeneration study to field trip attendees

Congratulations to our recent graduates!

Carmen Tubbesing Lab News October 25, 2017November 3, 2017

Drs. Stella Cousins and Carrie Levine both received their PhDs and have moved on to new and exciting opportunities.

Dr. Cousins graduated in August of 2016, with the dissertation “Causes and consequences of tree growth, injury, and decay in Sierra Nevada forest ecosystems.” She is now a Postdoctoral Fellow with Matthew Potts of UC Berkeley and Andrew Gray of the USFS Pacific Northwest Forest Inventory & Analysis Program.

Dr. Levine graduated in May 2017. Her dissertation is entitled “Forest resilience measured: Using a multi-timescale approach to quantify forest resilience in a changing world.” She is now a Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Davis in the Safford lab.

Carmen selected for Graduate Research Innovation Award

Carmen Tubbesing Lab News October 24, 2017October 25, 2017

Carmen in one of her field plots during a recent outreach field trip.

Carmen was awarded the Graduate Research Innovation Award (GRIN), a $25,000 competitive grant for fire science research administered by the national Joint Fire Science Program.

Carmen’s project, “Predicting forest recovery following high-severity fire” combines field measurements and simulation modeling to help answer an important question about the future of California’s forests: how long will it take for forests to grow back after our most severe fires?

The GRIN will help Carmen expand her field measurements, and will help her to increase forest managers’ access and engagement with her work.

Fungi survive megafires and aid forest regeneration

Carmen Tubbesing Lab News January 26, 2016January 31, 2016

Lab members Carrie Levine and John Battles contributed to a paper led by ESPM graduate student Sydney Glassman, entitled: Ectomycorrhizal fungal spore bank recovery after a severe forest fire: Some like it hot. This study investigated the effect of the Rim Fire, one of California’s largest wildfires in history, on the fungal spore bank.

Ectomycorrhizal fungi form symbiotic relationships with plants, especially trees. The fungi increases the surface area of the tree roots to allow it better access to nutrients, and the tree provides the fungi with carbon. As obligate mutualists, neither organism can survive without the other. Typically, high severity fires will kill soil fungi, but the fungi may be able to persist via a spore bank. This functions similarly to a seed bank. In areas adapted to low frequency, high severity fires, a subset of ECM fungi can survive in a soil spore bank as fire-resistant spores, but it is unknown whether the same is true for forests that are not adapted to these sorts of fire regimes.

Glassman et al. found that the spore bank persists after extreme fire even in a system that is not adapted for such extreme events. The presence of most taxa was not affected by the fire, and the bioassay method used in this study appears to be a good proxy for studying in situ spore bank dynamics.

These study findings were published in the ISME Journal, a publication of the International Society for Microbial Ecology.

SNAMP Final Report: fuels treatments benefit forests

Carmen Tubbesing Lab News January 10, 2016January 29, 2016

A final report concluding the 10-year Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project has been released, and finds consensus among a range of scientists that forest fuel reduction treatments have wide-reaching benefits. John Battles was a lead PI on the project.

See UCANR’s coverage of the story here, and the read the full SNAMP Final Report here.

Fuels treatments at SNAMP's Last Chance site. Photo from http://snamp.cnr.berkeley.edu/. — Fuels treatments at SNAMP’s Last Chance site. Photo from http://snamp.cnr.berkeley.edu/.

Outreach in the News!

Carmen Tubbesing Lab News November 11, 2015November 11, 2015

Carmen helped teach an all-day workshop to 120 local students at Hopland Research and Extension Center near Ukiah, California. The Ukiah Daily Journal put it in the paper! Check out the article here.

Carmen Tubbesing from the Dept of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, demonstrates how forest diversity can affect the severity of a forest fire. Chris Pugh-Ukiah Daily Journal. — Carmen demonstrates how forest diversity can affect the severity of a forest fire. Chris Pugh-Ukiah Daily Journal.

An example of how forest density determines how a fire can spread. Chris Pugh-Ukiah Daily Journal. — Using matches and wooden boards to show how forest density determines how a fire can spread. Chris Pugh-Ukiah Daily Journal.

Visit to Baja California

Carmen Tubbesing Lab News June 25, 2015August 25, 2015

Carrie and Carmen joined a group of scientists from the Forest Service, UC Davis, and UC Berkeley on a fire science retreat in Baja California, Mexico, this June. The trip, which was hosted by the California Fire Science Consortium, allowed U.S. researchers to observe forests with similar plant communities to those we study in the Sierra Nevada, but with different management and fire histories. The visit also allowed for knowledge exchange between Californian experts and members of Mexico’s Comisión Nacional Forestal, or CONAFOR, which manages local forests.

The group began in Ensenada with a day of presentations by Californian and Mexican experts and land managers. We then went on to Sierra de San Pedro Mártir National Park (SSPM), where Scott Stephens gave us a tour of some of his long-term forest monitoring efforts. After two days of beautiful hikes through SSPM, we drove to for Constitución National Park (PNC) and were briefed on recent forest and grazing management strategies by that park’s managers. Finally, we wrapped up the trip with a night at Laguna Mountain, in the Cleveland National Forest, California, where managers have been implementing progressive, hands-on techniques for fire risk reduction.

Thank you to the California Fire Science Consortium for making this trip possible!