Achievements

Kenia Gomez, Gabriel Abundis, Ernesto Chavez-Velasco

Forestry, Fire & Rangeland Management

Kenia Gomez, Gabriel Abundis & (graduate student) Ernesto Chavez-Velasco received research grants from the California Native Grassland Association to examine pressing issues on various California rangelands. Kenia will explore how drought and woody debris affect a local threatened species, North Coast Semaphore Grass; Gabriel will explore how local photovoltaic grids affect rangeland plant communities; Ernesto will work to develop field methods for selecting plants that will match with environmental characteristics for context-specific management to promote biodiversity and drought resilience on rangelands.

Rachael M. Wade

Biological Sciences

Rachael M. Wade, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences was awarded a grant for studying ecologically driven morphological plasticity in coralline algae. Her research focuses on the diversity of marine macroalgae and the evolutionary processes that determine and support their current distributions. Macroalgae are often poor dispersers, so understanding how they've diversified and have come to be globally distributed, in some cases. Her work often relies on the incorporation of historical specimens, with genetic resources derived from 19th-century collections, to better understand their diversity and taxonomy.

Silvia E Pavan and students

Biological Sciences

Silvia E Pavan, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences was awarded a grant for presenting research, with students, at the 2024 Meeting of the American Society of Mammologists. Sylvia is broadly interested in biodiversity, and she works with fieldwork exploration and collections-based research to discover and describe species and to understand species diversity and evolution. Her research has been focused on different groups of mammals, especially marsupials and rodents. 

Christa L. Meingast

Environmental Resources Engineering

Christa L. Meingast, Assistant Professor from the Engineering Department, was awarded a grant for a soil remediation study in distributed environments. Infectious diseases are a significant threat to public health. Though society enacts practices to prevent the spread of these dangerous diseases, challenges remain. Therefore, continual advancements in treatment and prevention are required. Wastewater treatment and viral clearance in pharmaceutical applications are two key health measures that prevent the spread of infections.

Justin Luong

Forestry, Fire & Rangeland Management

Justin Luong, Assistant Professor of Forestry, Fire and Rangeland Management Department was awarded a grant for assessing solar panel grid impacts on coastal prairies to guide regenerative agrivoltaics. Research in Dr. Luong’s lab focuses on adapting restoration practices for changing climates and integrating socio-economic and management perspectives to understand rangeland ecology. Lab members engage in hands-on learning opportunities that inform real-world rangeland restoration and management projects to cultivate a diverse and inclusive learning environment.

Emma Held, Darren Ward

Fisheries Biology

Emma Held was awarded a research fellowship from California Sea Grant to support her work on the life history of threatened Chinook salmon in the Mattole River. Emma's work will provide information to support ongoing conservation efforts by collaborators at the Mattole Salmon Group.

Lucy Kerhoulas, Rosemary Sherriff, Erik Jules, and Michael Kauffmann

Forestry, Fire & Rangeland Management

Lucy Kerhoulas, Rosemary Sherriff, Erik Jules, and Michael Kauffmann were awarded a $1.1 million grant to complete extensive vegetation mapping in the Klamath Mountains Ecoregion. Project vegetation surveys will be compared to vegetation surveys from the 1960s, 1980s, and 2010s to evaluate the influences of fire and climate change on high elevation plant communities.

The work will support three graduate students and numerous undergraduate students and will contribute substantially to the Cal Poly Humboldt Vascular Plant Herbarium; Robin Bencie and the California Native Plant Society are also project collaborators. Funding comes from the CA Department of Fish & Wildlife.

Jeffrey Abell, Tamara Barriquand, Christine Cass, Malcolm Edwards-Silva, Kenneth Mathe, Marcos Moreno, Carla Villanueva, Ethan Wadsworth

Oceanography

Oceanography faculty Jeffrey Abell, Tamara Barriquand, and Christine Cass presented their research at the international Ocean Sciences Meeting (New Orleans, LA) in February. This ~6,000 person conference brings together marine scientists from across disciplines. Undergraduate students Malcolm Edwards-Silva, Marcos Moreno, Carla Villanueva, Ethan Wadsworth, and Kenneth Mathe (Fall '23) also attended to present a poster on their capstone research project.

Pedro Peloso, Brandice Guerra

Biological Sciences

Professors Pedro Peloso (Biological Sciences) and Brandice Guerra received a grant from the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation (www.maxwell-hanrahan.org) to support an illustration internship at Cal Poly Humboldt. An international student will visit our community this spring to work in a project that aims to raise awareness about amphibian extinctions globally. You can read more about the internship here: https://now.humboldt.edu/news/new-scientific-illustration-internship-gi…

Kjirsten Wayman, Maralyn Renner, Alexander Wright, Aaron Floden, Jayne Lampley, Susan Farmer, Edward Schilling

Chemistry

Kjirsten Wayman (Chemistry Department), Maralyn Renner (M.S. Biology, 1980), Alexander Wright (Washington State U.), Aaron Floden (Missouri Botanical Garden), Jayne Lampley (U. Alabama), Susan Farmer, Edward Schilling (U. Tennessee, Knoxville) published a peer-reviewed article titled “New insights into systematics of the Trillium ovatum complex” in Madroño, a journal focusing on research of the Western American flora.  The article highlights Trillium oettingeri, an endemic plant to the Klamath Mountains and Cascade Range, and can be accessed at the following link: https://doi.org/10.3120/0024-9637-70.3.158