Faculty Lucy Kerhoulas, Erin Kelly Forestry, Fire & Rangeland Management Drs. Lucy Kerhoulas and Erin Kelly were awarded a $299,000 grant to support the ongoing Redwoods Rising student apprenticeship program. The program places students within resource teams to perform seasonal tasks associated with restoration activities throughout the Redwood National and State Parks, where they develop field experience, network with resource management specialists, and contribute to ongoing land management efforts. This summer they hired 12 apprentices to work on projects related to forestry, roads, watersheds, and outreach and interpretation.This project is in collaboration with Redwood National and State Parks and the Save the Redwoods League, which also provides funding.

Faculty Dr. Oscar Vargas Biological Sciences Dr. Oscar Vargas collaborated in the description of a new species of spiral gingers from the mountains of Costa Rica. The paper examines the possible causes of speciation by comparing the genetics and climate preference of the new species to its closest relative. https://doi.org/10.1600/036364423X16758877666039 

Student Regina Khoury Geology Regina Khoury has been selected to receive the Alistair and Judith McCrone Graduate Fellowship Award for the 2023-2024 academic year. This fellowship is given to one graduate student each year at Cal Poly Humboldt who demonstrates exceptional academic merit and significant potential for contribution to their field. Regina's MS thesis project with Professor Brandon Browne combines geologic mapping with geochemical and mineralogical analyses of lavas erupted from eight different vents within a ~200 year "flare up" of Medicine Lake volcano in the California Cascades. Her findings will advance hazard mitigation efforts at volcanoes worldwide. Congratulations Regina!

Faculty Tyler Evans, Alice Fialowski Mathematics My paper "Central Extensions of Restricted Affine Nilpotent Lie Algebras $n_+A_1^{(1)}(p)$" appeared in the Journal of Lie Theory, 33 (2023), No. 1, 195--215. This paper was written jointly with my colleague Alice Fialowski at Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem in Budapest, Hungary during my Spring 2022 sabbatical leave. 

https://www.heldermann.de/JLT/JLT33/JLT331/jlt33009.htm

Faculty Ho Yi Wan Wildlife Dr. Ho Yi Wan received a grant from the CSU Agricultural Research Institute to support research on a collaborative project that will develop a viable business plan associated with mass timber production in the coastal region of northern California. Dr. Wan and his lab will be responsible for assessing some of the ecological benefits of this plan, primarily with regards to wildfire risks reduction from timber harvest.

Faculty Erin Kelly, Benjamin Graham, and Jeff Kane Forestry, Fire & Rangeland Management Drs. Erin Kelly, Benjamin Graham, and Jeff Kane received a grant from the Joint Fire Science Program (administered by the Departments of Interior and Agriculture) to support a study on community recovery after wildfires, and how recovery can lead to social-ecological resilience. The study will look into what recovery looks like in communities impacted by wildfires, the networks within communities present for recovery, and the resources available to implement community recovery. Findings will be useful for policy makers trying to create funding, regulatory, and other policy mechanisms to facilitate community recovery, and organizations working toward social-ecological resilience in fire-prone landscapes.

Student Regina Khoury and Sarah Leidinger Geology Graduate students Regina Khoury and Sarah Leidinger (Geology) are the 2022-2023 recipients of the $1,500 Richard Chambers Memorial Scholarships from the Northern California Geological Society. Regina Khoury's MS thesis proposal is titled “Pre-Eruptive Storage Conditions of Magmas Erupted During the ~12ka Flare Up of Medicine Lake Volcano, CA.” Her advisor is Dr. Brandon L. Browne in Geology. Sarah Leidinger's MS thesis proposal is titled “Bathymetry and carbon accumulation rate of a rare Northern California coastal peatland.” Her advisor is Dr. Laura Levy in Geology. Congratulations Regina and Sarah! 

Faculty Hunter Harrill Forestry, Fire & Rangeland Management Hunter Harrill (Forestry) was a co-author of a recently published article titled "Operational Analysis of Grapple Yarding in New Zealand: A Case Study of Three Mechanized Harvesting Operations"  in the journal Forests. https://doi.org/10.3390/f14020190

Faculty Silvia Pavan Biological Sciences Dr. Silvia Pavan received a grant from the National Science Foundation to implement a project that will digitize and georeference Cal Poly Humboldt’s mammal collection. The project will be part of a collaborative effort under the Ranges Thematic Collections Network (Ranges TCN), an initiative lead by the University of North Carolina, to digitize and mobilize trait data from mammalian museum specimens from across the American West, including standard external morphological measurements, reproductive and life history observations, and information on ecological associations. Resulting trait datasets will support next-generation anatomical and evolutionary research, and provide baselines for future population monitoring efforts.

Faculty Erik S. Jules Biological Sciences Erik Jules (Biological Sciences) published a paper with ten Humboldt student co-authors in the American Journal of Botany (doi.org/10.1002/ajb2.16112). The study -- titled "Genotype accounts for intraspecific variation in the timing and duration of life cycle events" -- was an experimental study of willows covering an area approximately the size of a football field. The results showed that the timing of key life events, such as leaf emergence, flowering, and fruit set, are all heritable traits, indicating that natural selection could favor some individuals under changing climate conditions. Of the ten students, six went onto graduate school after leaving Humboldt.

Faculty Diksha Shrestha, Jun Ou, Ariel Rogers, Amani Jereb, Deborah Okyere, Jingyi Chen, Yong Wang Environmental Resources Engineering In collaboration with University of Arkansas, we recently published a journal paper at Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces. In this work, we mimicked soil-like porous media by microspheres at various densitiesm, simultaneously characterized the pores and tracked bacterial motion in pores, quantified changes in bacterial swimming due to pore-scale confinement, established correlation between bacterial trapping and geometric confinement, and proposed the importance of distinguishing bacterial motility from mobility.

Faculty Chunying Wei, Jun Ou, Farzaneh Farhang Mehr, Daan Maijer, Steve Cockcroft, Lateng A, Yacong Zhang, Zhi Chen, Zhihua Zhu Environmental Resources Engineering Dr. Jun Ou, as a corresponding author, recently published a journal article which investigated the industrial scale Counter Pressure Casting (CPC) process at the journal Metallurgical and Materials Transactions B. Using an approach that combines advanced numerical modelling and industrial data acquisition, the work enhances the understanding of how the casting/die interface gap and pressure impact the temperature field in the casting. 

This article was selected as the editor's choice and this honour is reflective of the work's comprehensive nature and its overall excellence

Student Zack Erickson, Dr. Kevin Boston, Dr. Pascal Berrill Published journal article: "Listening to Indigenous Voices, Interests, and Priorities That
Would Inform Tribal Co-Management of Natural Resources on a
California State University Forest"  https://doi.org/10.3390/f13122165

Staff Allyson Carroll Forestry, Fire & Rangeland Management Allyson Carroll (research associate) received a grant from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to support research that will use redwood tree rings to date earthquakes on the northern San Andreas Fault. Tree ring signals, such as changes in growth and dates of reiterated trunks, will be used to constrain the year of the large magnitude event that occurred prior to the 1906 earthquake. Project findings will improve earthquake recurrence models for this region. Collaborators include Dr. Stephen Sillett and Marie Antoine at Cal Poly Humboldt, as well as Dr. Belle Philibosian at USGS and Dr. Ozgur Kozaci.

Faculty Hunter Harrill Forestry, Fire & Rangeland Management Dr. Hunter Harrill (Forestry) was invited to give a presentation titled "Grapple Yarding Productivity Studies." His presentation was part of a panel on Grapple Yarding at the Western Region Council on Forest Engineering (WR.COFE) annual meeting on January 12th, 2023, in Lebanon, Oregon.

Faculty Dr. Peter Goetz, Dr. Andrew Conner Mathematics Published a paper titled: QUANTUM PROJECTIVE PLANES AS CERTAIN GRADED TWISTED TENSOR PRODUCTS  in The Journal of Algebra; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jalgebra.2022.11.033. The paper is joint with Dr. Andrew Conner at Saint Mary's College of California and will appear in the April 2023 issue. The main results of the paper are: (1) a classification up to algebra isomorphism of quadratic graded twisted tensor products of K[x,y] and K[z], and (2) the determination of which three-dimensional Sklyanin algebras contain a quantum P^1. Sklyanin algebras first arose in the late 20th century in the context of quantum inverse scattering problems in physics.

Faculty Susan Edinger Marshall Forestry, Fire & Rangeland Management Dr. Susan Edinger Marshall received a planning grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to develop the California Rangeland Education (CRED) program in collaboration with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and Audubon California. The initiative aims to assist individuals in completing educational requirements to sit for the California Certified Rangeland Manager (CRM) exam, analogous to the Registered Professional Foresters (RPF) exam. The program will create a curated study guide for prospective candidates, and also inventory and suggest integrative range courses being offered in California, perhaps by collaborating with other campuses and ranches.

Student Jasmine Williamshen, Alison O'Dowd, Kyle De Juilio, Nicholas Som, Darren Ward, Brian Williamshen Environmental Science & Management Former ESM graduate student Jasmine Williamshen and co-authors Alison O'Dowd (ESM professor), Kyle De Juilio (Yurok Tribe Fisheries Program), Nicholas Som (USFWS), Darren Ward (Fisheries professor) and Brian Williamshen (UC Davis) published a paper entitled, "Restoration pulse flows from a California dam temporarily increase drifting invertebrate biomass concentration" in the Journal of Environmental Management (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479722022204).

Faculty Micaela Szykman Gunther, Ho Yi Wan Wildlife Drs. Micaela Szykman Gunther and Ho Yi Wan received a $170,000 grant from the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement (NCASI) to support a distribution study on the marten and fisher, two closely related members of the weasel family that are both species of special concern. The project aims to assess potential shifts in the species’ distributions after wildfires in Lassen County, and will support two Department of Wildlife graduate students. Findings will determine if certain management strategies or habitat types are more resilient to fire, potentially serving as refugia for martens and fishers.

Faculty Bonnie Ludka, Adam Young, Robert Guza, William O’Reilly, Mark Merrifield Environmental Resources Engineering Dr. Bonnie Ludka and colleagues have published a paper in Coastal Engineering titled "Alongshore variability of a southern California beach, before and after nourishment." Their work investigates the link between wave-driven alongshore currents and hotspots of beach erosion and accretion on a southern California beach. Additionally, they analyze the effectiveness (both positive and negative impacts) of beach nourishment as a coastal management technique to manage the hotspots. The influence of alongshore sand transport on the migration and closure of a nearby river mouth is also discussed.