Achievements

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.

Kerry Byrne and Catalina Cuellar-Gempeler

Environmental Science & Management

Drs. Kerry Byrne and Catalina Cuellar-Gempeler received a grant to support a study on Applegate’s milkvetch, a federally endangered plant species found only in the lower Klamath Basin of southern Oregon. The project will investigate alternative management practices that may better promote Applegate's milkvetch recovery, and ultimately provide managers with a roadmap for optimal management of this species. Collaborators will include Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, US Fish and Wildlife Service, ODA, and the City of Klamath Falls, OR.

Zach Walllace, Bryan Bedrosian, Jeff Dunk, Dave LaPlante, Brian Woodbridge, et al.

Environmental Science & Management

Jeff Dunk (ESM) and colleagues recently published a paper on predicting the spatial distribution of wintering Golden Eagles in Wyoming (including parts of surrounding states).  Much of the existing work on Golden Eagles pertains to their breeding season habitat use.  A link to the manuscript is here.  

Jim Graham

Environmental Science & Management

Dr. Jim Graham received a grant from 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.

Steve Martin

Environmental Science & Management

The U.S. Secretary of the Interior has appointed Prof. Steve Martin to the Bureau of Land Management's Resource Advisory Council for Northern California. The Council provides advice to the federal agency regarding the management of public land resources.

Kerry Byrne

Environmental Science & Management

Dr. Kerry Byrne (Associate Professor, Environmental Science and Management) was awarded a sabbatical research grant from Western SARE (Sustainable Agriculture, Research, and Education) to work with collaborator Dr. Kelly Hopping at Boise State University on a project entitled "Seeds underhoof: can the soil seed bank facilitate restoration of sheep-grazed, cheatgrass-invaded rangelands?" Details of the award can be found here: https://projects.sare.org/sare_project/sw23-944/

Johnathon A. Macias

Environmental Science & Management

Johnathon A. Macias published the peer-reviewed paper “Highlighting the Disconnect Between Legislation and Sustainable Cannabis” in the newly released ideaFest Journal. https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/ideafest/

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).