Enhancing the ecological fidelity of California ecosystem predictions – past, present and future
Overview
Rapid climate change is amplifying natural disturbances such as storms, wildfires, and insect outbreaks. Historical ecosystem management has also contributed to ecosystem states that, in some cases, may increase vulnerability to disturbance. In California, state climate policy is pushing extensive new forest management approaches to simultaneously foster ecological resilience, reduced wildfire hazard and carbon sequestration. These policies have been based on a management-centric understanding of forest change that may be challenged by ongoing CO2 and climate change. This talk will present evidence that the current state of Sierra Nevada mixed conifer forests has already been influenced by more than historical management, and ways in which we are using field experiments and new modeling capabilities to enhance the ecological realism of ecosystem predictions at a policy-relevant scale.
Bio
Lara Kueppers is an Associate Professor in the Energy and Resource Group at UC Berkeley, where she teaches quantitative environmental science and nature-based climate solutions. As an interdisciplinary environmental scientist, her work examines ecological responses and feedbacks to climate change, using field experiments and observations, as well as numerical models. Her primary focus is on climate-ecosystem interactions in Western US forests, but she has also studied tropical forests, alpine meadows and agricultural systems. Previously, Dr. Kueppers was a Research Scientist at Berkeley Lab, and an Assistant Professor at UC Merced. She holds a PhD from UC Berkeley, and MS and BS degrees from Stanford University.