Activity

Micah Wright and Rosemary Sherriff published a new article on climate change impacts in forests in Southwest Alaska with National Park Service collaborators in the open-access journal Ecosphere. Results suggest that historically productive forests in Southwest Alaska are showing declines in growth under warmer conditions, with important implications for future forest conditions and productivity. Our results corroborate climate change model forecasts for the region. Article weblink: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2462

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On a weekend in late September 2018, more than twenty Cal Poly Humboldt Geography students, led by professors Matthew Derrick and Rosemary Sherriff, hopped in vans for a three-day field study that included an investigation into the impacts of the recent Carr Fire and an exploration natural beauty of Lassen Volcanic National Park. 

The Carr Fire, reported as one of the most destructive fires in California’s history, started on July 23, 2018, near Whiskeytown off Highway 299. Before being fully contained in late August, the conflagration spread nearly 230,000 acres across Trinity and Shasta counties, destroying more than 1,000 residences—mainly in and around west Redding—and claiming the lives of three firefighters. 

On the first day of the field study, the Humboldt geographers met with Tom Garcia, a firefighter at National Park Service, and Eric Knapp, a research ecologist with the US Forest Service. Starting at the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, students listened to Garcia as he discussed the origins of the fire and the damage it inflicted in and around the park. Garcia also explained, through a guided—and nearly off-road—tour of park land impacted by the Carr Fire, the National Park Service’s efforts to ameliorate the worst effects of forest fires through controlled burns. 

After surveying some of the fire’s impacts to the park land, the Humboldt geographers continued with Knapp to examine some of the devastation inflicted on human settlements, including the destruction of homes and human life by what has been reported as the state’s worst-ever fire tornado. According to Knapp, the fire vortex, which claimed the life of Redding-based firefighter Jeremy Stoke, was so unusual that fire ecologists and other experts are still grappling to understand it. 
Students and faculty alike were struck, sometimes on a very emotional level, by the landscapes of destruction they viewed in relatively wealthy neighborhoods located in west Redding at the wildland-urban interface. Fire razed some homes to their foundations while neighboring homes stood seemingly unscathed, leaving an impression of randomness in scorched path. However, as Knapp explained, while a degree of randomness characterized the fire, choices in home building materials, efforts to stave off air flow in and out of houses, relative location vis-à-vis the wildland, and other pertinent variables help explain resultant geographic patterns of destruction and clemency. 

Following their examination of the Carr Fire, the Humboldt geographers traveled out to Lassen Volcanic National Park, where they set up camp for two days. Faculty led a series of explorations, including a hike to the top of Lassen Peak, surveying the natural beauty and wonder found in the park’s landscapes.

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Geography professors Matthew Derrick and Rosemary Sherriff co-edited the 2018 issue of The California Geographer, the flagship peer-reviewed journal of the California Geographical Society. The volume—weighing in at more than 270 pages, the largest in journal’s nearly six-decade history—features articles from Humboldt Geography faculty, including Derrick and Nicholas Perdue, and former students, including Nathaniel Douglass and Eric Fowler, as well as academic geographers from throughout the state. The 2018 issue marks the second year of Derrick and Sherriff editing the journal; it can be accessed at the following link: http://scholarworks.csun.edu/handle/10211.3/203086

Rosemary Sherriff and Lucy Kerhoulas received an NSF Award for ~$400,000 for three years to assess differential response of conifers to drought across geographic gradients. The project uses the recent, severe California drought as a test case to yield important insights on the effects of multi-year drought stress, competition and habitat factors. This information is needed to model tree responses to climate change and as input for forest management in the face of future wildfire. The project involves field sampling and analysis of tree-ring growth and carbon isotope ratios. The team will involve undergraduate and graduate students and multiple collaborators.

 

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Madelinn Schriver (MS 2015, Forestry and Wildland Resources), Rosemary Sherriff, and US Forest Service and UC Cooperative Extension collaborators published an article on oak woodlands along a gradient of conifer encroachment in northwestern California in the journal Ecosphere. The study highlights (1) the process and severity of encroachment is consistent across the region, resulting in substantial oak habitat loss and a shift toward conifer dominance in formerly diverse woodlands of northwestern California; and (2) oak woodlands require concerted management effort to ensure their future persistence. Article weblink: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2446

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Geography professors Matthew Derrick and Rosemary Sherriff co-edited the 2018 issue of The California Geographer, the flagship peer-reviewed journal of the California Geographical Society. The volume—weighing in at more than 270 pages the largest in journal’s nearly six-decade history—features articles from Humboldt Geography faculty, including Derrick Nicholas Perdue, and former students, including Nathaniel Douglass and Eric Fowler, as well as academic geographers from throughout the state. The 2018 issue marks the second year of Derrick and Sherriff editing the journal; it can be accessed at the following link: http://scholarworks.csun.edu/handle/10211.3/203086
 

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On Oct. 18, Geography professor Matthew Derrick delivered a featured public lecture, titled “Post-Soviet Central Eurasia’s New Religious Landscapes: A View from Tatarstan,” at American University of Central Asia (AUCA) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where he is a visiting scholar during his sabbatical for the current academic year.

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After a long but fun road trip down to San Diego, Humboldt came home with several top awards from the 71st Annual California Geographical Society meeting in San Diego. The 16 current students, along with alumni, who attended represented Humboldt Geography with strong enthusiasm and professionalism.

Professor Matthew Derrick was awarded the Friend of Geography Award, and he was elected CGS Vice President. Dr. Nick Perdue was elected to the organization’s board, as was Merien Townsel, our recent graduate and current Administrative Support Assistant.

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Geography Department Chair, Rosemary Sherriff co-authored a new paper in the April 2017 Journal of Biogeography: Volume 44, Issue 4 titled "Spruce growth responses to warming vary by ecoregion and ecosystem type near the forest-tundra boundary in south-west Alaska". 

PermLink: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/…/doi/10.…/jbi.12968/abstract

Matthew Derrick recently was selected as a Fulbright Scholar. The award will support him while on sabbatical for the 2017/18 academic year, while he conducts comparative field research in Central Asia. For the duration of the award he will be affiliated with American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

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