Achievements

T. Luke George

Wildlife

Dr. Luke George, emeritus faculty in Wildlife, along with other authors published an article describing how the disease West Nile Virus is affecting bird populations. "Persistent impacts of West Nile virus on North American bird populations" was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences (PNAS). Read the abstract online at http://www.pnas.org/content/112/46/14290.short.

It is also worth noting that some of the data in the paper came from bird banding operations at the Wright Wildlife Refuge, a small refuge on the edge of Eureka where many HSU students have worked over the years. Numerous graduate students have run bird banding operations there, and they and faculty have trained scores of undergraduates to handle and measure birds using standardized bird netting and monitoring processes. It's one of many sites in a network of field research sites called MAPS (monitoring avian productivity and survivorship).

Joe Szewczak

Biological Sciences

Dr. Joe Szewczak, Biological Sciences Dept., was recently featured in the October issue of the California Educator Magazine http://educator.cta.org/i/587184-october-2015/23 The article discusses the "Real Bat Man", as Dr. Szewczak teaches, among other courses, Biology of Chiroptera, which is the study of bats. Dr. Szewczak has studied many bat species, looking at migration patterns, social communication, endangered species, and how to reduce fatalities caused by energy-producing wind turbines. He and his colleagues recently completed a two-year trial that provided high-intensity ultrasound emitted from turbines can steer bats away from death.

Brian Tissot

Biological Sciences

Brian Tissot was an invited speaker at a conference sponsored by the European Association of Surfing Doctors; a group of surfers that are also medical doctors and health practitioners. Held near Biarittz in the beautiful Basque region of southern France he was tasked with the question: Why Should Surfers Care about Ocean Conservation?

Andrew Stubblefield, Rosalea Bond

Forestry, Fire & Rangeland Management

Andrew P. Stubblefield, Professor of Hydrology and Watershed Management has recently published a paper titled Sensitivity of summer stream temperatures to climate variability and riparian reforestation strategies
in the Journal of Hydrology, Regional Studies. Coauthors were recent M.S. graduate Rosealea M. Bond and faculty emeritus Robert W. Van Kirk.

Joanna Murphy and Ryan Gustafson

Environmental Resources Engineering

Joanna Murphy and Ryan Gustafson, two recent graduates from the Environmental Resources Engineering B.S. program, just published a peer-review article in "Desalination." Joanna and Ryan looked at heat and mass transfer in membrane distillation, a novel process that can produce high quality water from waste heat. They developed a new model that helps scaling-up the process and validated it experimentally in the lab. As a result, a larger-scale membrane distillation system is now being constructed at HSU. More details here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0011916415300837

Mark Colwell

Wildlife

Mark Colwell gave a paper summarizing his research on Snowy Plovers at the 40th meeting of the International Wader Study Group in Iceland.

Erin Kelly

Forestry, Fire & Rangeland Management

Assistant Professor Erin Kelly of the Forestry Department is working with researchers at the US Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station to find ways to help forest landowners conduct fuels treatments at large scales and across ownership boundaries to improve fire resilience. Dr. Kelly received $100,000 from the US Forest Service to support the work, which started with documenting known large-scale, cross-boundary fire restoration projects, then choosing case studies across Oregon and Washington. Jodie Pixley, a student in the HSU Environment and Community Master’s program, spent her summer in the Klamath Basin and Ashland, Oregon, working on two case studies.

David Greene, Jeff Keane & Melanie McCavour

Forestry, Fire & Rangeland Management

David Greene and Jeff Kane of the Department of Forestry and Wildland Resources and Melanie McCavour of the Department of Environmental Science and Management have just been awarded a 10-year $800,000 grant from the Bureau of Land Management for a study of Baker Cypress. This tree species, restricted to a few populations in northern California and southern Oregon, has seeds retained in cones that will only open when burned and the continuation of fire exclusion is strongly contributing to its potential extinction. The purpose of the grant is to better understand the reproductive ecology of Baker Cypress, determine the feasibility of using prescribed fire and other treatments to inform the restoration and management of this species, and create the Environmental Impact Report that will underpin the management plan.

Mark Colwell, Dana Herman

Wildlife

Dana Herman (now working for the US Fish & Wildlife Service, Sacramento) and Mark Colwell published a paper on Snowy Plover lifetime reproductive success showing that a small proportion of the Humboldt County population contributed disproportionately to population growth. Plovers that bred on gravel substrates of the Eel River produced appreciably more young than those on sandy, ocean-fronting beaches. Their work was featured in the 28 Aug 2015 issue of the eWildlifer (wildlife.org), published by the The Wildlife Society.

Leabeth Mae Peterson

Environmental Resources Engineering

Leabeth Mae Peterson received the SWE Outstanding Collegiate Member award by the Society for Women Engineers, honoring collegiate members who have made an outstanding contribution to SWE, the engineering community, and their campus. She will be honored at a formal ceremony at WE15, the world's largest conference for women engineers, scheduled for Oct. 23, 2015 in Nashville, Tenn. The conference gathers over 8,000 women at all stages of their engineering careers.