Lab News

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.

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.

Congratulations to Dr. Maya Hayden who completed her PhD this August. Her dissertation, “Abandoned Channels as Refugia for Sustaining Pioneer Riparian Forests” combined field data with mesocosm experiments to explore controls on cottonwood recruitment dynamics along the Sacramento River in Northern California. Dr. Hayden will continue her education as a California Sea Grant Fellow working with the NOAA San Francisco Bay and Outer Coast Sentinel Site Cooperative (NOAA Sentinel Site).

Congratulations also to Dr. Natalie van Doorn (PhD 2014), a post-doctoral fellow at UC Davis. Dr. van Doorn was recently appointed as a research urban ecologist with the USFS Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW). She will be working out of the Albany, CA office where she will continue her research on street tree demography and climate-ready trees for urban ecosystems.

Since 2004, the SNAMP Science and Public Participation teams have been working to understand how forest vegetation treatments to prevent wildfire affect fire risk, wildlife, forest health, and water, all while developing a new model for engaging the public on land management issues. Their work was profiled in the spring issue of our College of Natural Resources magazine: “Today, as SNAMP reaches the end of a 10-year run, the project has proven to be a multidisciplinary, multiagency, multimedia success that has the potential to transform not only how we view forest fires, but more intriguingly, how scientists, government agencies, and public stakeholders interact in the pursuit of common goals. …SNAMP’s goals went far beyond simply figuring out the best way to slow a wildfire’s spread. The experiment proceeded along parallel tracks, studying fire, forest health, fishers, owls, water quality issues, and spatial data. And crucially, public participation wasn’t an afterthought or an also-ran, but the key piece of the puzzle.

Read the full article

As ecologists, we know that there is a never-ending supply of things to learn about the forest. So in recent outreach and education activities, PhD student Stella Cousins has been helping get kids started early. In May, Stella teamed up with other ESPM graduate students to host 3rd graders from Malcolm X Elementary for a lesson about fire frequency and severity. Fire tag is a great way to learn about stand density!

In April for Cal Day, Berkeley’s Student Association for Fire Ecology joined the American Indian Graduate Student Association to host Native American high school students and their families for an intro to the many opportunities at Cal. Graduate students presented hands-on activities about tree rings and drought, cultural use of fire, forest ecology, and even some fire management dress-up!

Photos courtesy of AIGSA

Spring semester has been full of good news in the Battles Lab! We are happy to welcome two PhD students in the fall, Joan Dudney and Carmen Tubessing. Carrie Levine has conquered her qualifying exam and advanced to candidacy. Clayton Sodergren was awarded the Babcock Prize, an award to graduating seniors in the College of Natural Resources who have excelled in the discipline of Environmental Science. Jeneya Fertel, with the mentorship of Stella Cousins and John Sanders, recently completed a undergraduate research project entitled “The effect of spring snow regime on tree growth in the Sierra Nevada”. And last but not least, Natalie van Doorn and Maya Hayden presented outstanding finishing talks at the ESPM Graduate Symposium! Natalie will soon begin at postdoctoral appointment at UC Davis collaborating with the USFS on urban forest dynamics.

This fall our lab group is happy to welcome visiting student researchers Andie Irons and Briana Becerra.

Bri, who is studying forest dynamics using canopy cover, is a junior at CSU Monterey Bay and recently completed an REU at Hubbard Brook. Andi is nearing completion of an MS at SUNY-ESF, where she works with lab alum John Stella. Her research examines changes to the Sacramento River’s riparian forests through time. Andi will soon join the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission as a biologist, focusing on plant and wildlife monitoring in the Tuolumne River watershed.

This fall our lab group is happy to welcome visiting student researchers Andie Irons and Briana Becerra.

Bri, who is studying forest dynamics using canopy cover, is a junior at CSU Monterey Bay and recently completed an REU at Hubbard Brook. Andi is nearing completion of an MS at SUNY-ESF, where she works with lab alum John Stella. Her research examines changes to the Sacramento River’s riparian forests through time. Andi will soon join the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission as a biologist, focusing on plant and wildlife monitoring in the Tuolumne River watershed.

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Congratulations to Stella Cousins who continues to shine as a scientist and communicator. She received an inaugural award in the Graduate Training in Cooperative Extension Program to support her work to bring the forest into the classroom. She also successfully competed for a grant from the Renewable Resources Extension Act to expand her smartphone microscope project. Stella’s work with Cooperative Extension and the Forestry Institute for Teachers was recently featured in ESPM’s departmental blog. Check out Bringing Forests into Focus“.

More information on the Graduate Training in Cooperative Extension Program