About Professor Stephen Sillett
Professor Stephen C. Sillett, Kenneth L. Fisher Chair in Redwood Forest Ecology at Humboldt State University, is recognized as the foremost expert on redwood trees. Sillett and his students changed the way scientists looked at redwood forests when they began climbing the trees and discovered crowns supporting a rich community of life. Sillett’s pioneering research and findings have been chronicled in scientific journals such as Nature, American Journal of Botany, Ecological Monographs, Ecological Applications, Bryologist, and Northwest Science. His work has also been profiled in books (e.g., Richard Preston’s The Wild Trees, Robert Van Pelt’s Forest Giants of the Pacific Coast), magazines (e.g., The New Yorker, Discover, New Scientist, and National Geographic), television (e.g., National Geographic’s Wild Chronicles, BBC’s Planet Earth, PBS’s Oregon Field Guide), and film (MacGillivray-Freeman’s Adventures in Wild California). In 2006, Sillett was named Humboldt State University’s Scholar of the Year.
Stephen Sillett Biography & Curriculum Vitae
My wife, Marie E. Antoine, is a botanist and lecturer at Humboldt State University. Together we study the forest canopy. Here she is perched 300 feet high in a redwood tree amidst epiphytes growing from the broken top of the tree’s main trunk.
My Biography
I have had a long and abiding interest in what’s happening in the tops of trees. I began climbing tall Douglas-fir trees while working on my bachelor’s degree at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. That experience shaped my desire to become a botanist and led me to earn my master’s degree from the University of Florida, where I studied a cloud forest canopy in Costa Rica. I earned my Ph.D. from Oregon State University—focusing my research on old-growth Douglas-fir forest canopies in the Cascade Mountains.
In 1996, I began teaching at Humboldt State University. Moving to the northwestern corner of California was a golden opportunity: it enabled me to extend my research into redwood forests, whose canopies were largely unexplored.
My research specifically focuses on the complex communities of arboreal organisms living hundreds of feet above the ground. I’m also interested in the biophysical limits to tree height. Put simply, this research attempts to answer the question, “How tall can trees grow?” Accordingly, I and several collaborators spend considerable time seeking out exceptionally tall trees. In the summer of 2006, we verified the identity of the world’s tallest tree, which lives in nearby Redwood National Park. Recently, I have also begun considering how second-growth redwood forests might be managed to accelerate the development of old-growth forest complexity and biodiversity.
In addition to redwood and Douglas-fir, I have extensively studied giant sequoia in the Sierra Nevada, Sitka spruce in Washington and California, and the tallest Eucalyptus in Australia.
