Breadcrumb
Achievements
Publications and achievements submitted by our faculty, staff, and students.
Garrett Leonard (ESM), Christa Dagley (FFRM), and Pascal Berrill (FFRM)
Environmental Science & Management
Undergraduate student Garrett Leonard published research on a novel approach to forest restoration being tested at Cal Poly Humboldt's L.W. Schatz Demonstration Tree Farm. This is one of the few studies on redwood planted outside its native range, with the involvement of hundreds of students in forestry classes since 2014. Citation: Leonard GB, Dagley CM, and Berrill J-P (2026) Coast redwood planted outside its range outperforms the native Douglas-fir beneath an overstory of varying density. Front. For. Glob. Change 9:1805175. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2026.1805175
Angela Soto
Environmental Science & Management
Angela Soto, graduate student in the Byrne Applied Ecology Lab, has been awarded a $24,000 ARI NextGen fellowship by the CSU Agricultural Research Institute for the 2026 - 2027 Academic Year. For her master's research, she is assessing the impacts of different management strategies on the endangered Applegate's milkvetch (Astragalus applegatei) and its soil microbiome.
Astra Mattingly, Kyra Kranyak-Schwartz
Environmental Science & Management
Geospatial Science and Technology majors Astra Mattingly and Kyra Kranyak-Schwartz won first place in the Undergraduate Digital Map Design Contest at the California Geographical Society annual conference in Huntington Beach, CA, for their interactive map of campus accessibility at Cal Poly Humboldt. The map depicts a visual ranking of campus pathway accessibility, highlighting areas of the campus that are not equally accessible. View their interactive web map here.
Tawanda Gara
Environmental Science & Management
Dr. Tawanda Gara’s open-access reprint book based on the Special Issue “Remote Sensing of Vegetation Function and Traits,” which he guest edited, was published in Remote Sensing. The book is a collection of research papers from diverse scholars across the globe that focus on studying plants and ecosystems using remote sensing and data-driven methods. This achievement reflects a collaborative effort to advance ecological monitoring and environmental science using geospatial technology.
Jim Graham
Environmental Science & Management
Dr. Jim Graham received continued funding from California Trout (CalTrout) that will pay for a graduate student to perform GIS habitat modeling in the Eel River Watershed, and develop a subsequent Riparian Climate Refugia (RCR) data set. The data will provide information on where riparian corridors (vegetation growing near natural bodies of water) contain remaining climate refugia on the CA North Coast. Climate refugia are landscape features that provide environmental protection and can allow species to persist through climate change effects. The data will be particularly useful to land managers, who can use it to make more informed restoration and conservation decisions.
Laurie Richmond, Mary Mangubat, Erik Meusborn, and Andrew Todd
Environmental Science & Management
Cal Poly Humboldt students from the Environmental Science & Management (ESM) major Mary Mangubat, Erik Meusborn, and Andrew Todd are co-authors on a recent publication in the Journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. The publication is titled Fisheries of the middle: building collaborations between seafood and agriculture to revitalize and enhance mid-scale food production. The research began as an undergraduate research project in the ESM Planning & Policy capstone class where students were exploring common challenges among the seafood and agriculture systems in our local region -- working for community clients Ashley Vellis (Ashely's Seafood) and Megan Kenney (North Coast Growers' Association). It then evolved to include the ideas and voices of many other scholars and practitioners working in seafood and ag systems. The piece argues for the development and sustenance of "middle scale" seafood systems in addition to those focused on smaller-scale or direct-marketing strategies.
Monica Sheffer and Kerry Byrne
Environmental Science & Management
Graduate student Jesse Laine, with Drs. Monica Sheffer and Kerry Byrne, are investigating how grassland restoration shapes insect populations in Northern California’s coastal prairies. Insects are declining globally due to threats like climate change and habitat loss, with huge consequences for conservation and agriculture since they provide essential ecosystem services. Yet their biodiversity remains poorly understood. This project will help fill that knowledge gap while informing grassland conservation, agriculture, and management. It also builds on Laine and Byrne’s ongoing research into how prairie restoration affects plants, soil health, and forage production.
This project is funded by the CSU Agricultural Research Institute.
Sean Stewart, Kerry Byrne
Environmental Science & Management
Sean Stewart has published the first chapter of his thesis in the journal Restoration Ecology. For this research, Stewart and his M.S. advisor, Dr. Kerry Byrne, compared long-term demographic data and survival of transplanted (9 year) and extant (7 years) individuals of Applegate's milkvetch within the same population. Applegate's milkvetch is a Federally Endangered plant species found only near or within the city limits of Klamath Falls, Oregon. The results of this study suggest that population reinforcement can be a successful conservation tool for Applegate's milkvetch under the right conditions and the study may be used as a tool to inform conservation strategies for other imperiled herbaceous perennial plant species.
Stewart S. M. and K. M. Byrne. 2025. Is reinforcement a viable conservation strategy for the endangered perennial herb, Astragalus applegatei? Restoration Ecology 33: e14314. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.14314
Sean returned to Humboldt State as a non-traditional student and earned his B.S. and M.S. in the ESM Department. He was the 2021 recipient of the McCrone graduate student fellowship award.
Kerry Byrne (ESM), Justin Luong (FFRM)
Environmental Science & Management
Drs. Kerry Byrne (ESM) and Justin Luong co-led a manuscript published in the journal Ecosphere. The study describes the results of a 4-year drought experiment in southern Oregon on two understudied sagebrush species. They found that severe drought had divergent effects on two adjacent plant communities with differing dominant sagebrush species (low sagebrush and silver sagebrush).
Byrne, K.M.*, J. C. Luong*, and K. Kaczynski. 2025. Divergent drought responses in two cold desert shrublands. Ecosphere 16(3): e70211. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.70211
*co-first authors
Jesse Laine, Kerry Byrne
Environmental Science & Management
Natural Resources graduate student Jesse Laine (ESM option) has been awarded a $25,000 NEXTGEN research fellowship from the Agricultural Research Institute to support his proposed study entitled "Insect biodiversity in a restored coastal grassland." Jesse is a first-year graduate student in Kerry Byrne's lab.