It was a pleasure to attend Klamath Falls' 95th annual chamber of commerce gala awards with OIT's President Dr. Chris Maples (center), and OIT's head of facilities, Jim Lake (left). We won the Environmental Leadership award in recognition of our innovation with geothermal and solar energies.
1 Comment
Live in Northern California? Check out our research at the Northern California Botanists Symposium12/14/2015 If you are attending the Northern California Botanists Symposium, be sure to check out our poster about Rizka's Applegate's milkvetch pollination experiment at the poster session at the Chico State campus on Tuesday morning, Jan 12!
Congratulations to Steve, who just found out that his grant proposal, "A Checklist of Lichens for the Lava Beds National Monument, California" to the California Lichen Society was funded in full!
Lava Beds National Monument is located in northeastern California, in an area that is rarely visited by lichenologists. The Monument is comprised of roughly 32 different types of basalt and andesite flows, in addition to other unique geologic features (Sheehy, 2014). These diverse conditions create a variety of microhabitats on which lichens flourish. However, when Sheehy began inventorying lichens at the Monument in 2012, there were only 19 species recorded in the National Park Database. Since that time, he has expanded the list to include 159 total species, including three species that previously were unreported in California, and one species new to science (McCune et al., 2014). The goal of his ongoing project is to conduct a thorough survey of the lichens of Lava Beds National Monument, add all new species to the National Park Database, create a herbarium for use in the Park, and finally, create a checklist for park visitors and researchers. Citations: McCune, B., J.D. Meglio, and M.J. Curtis. An unusual ascospore shape and a new species, Umbilicaria nodulospora (Umbilicariaceae), from California and Oregon. The Bryologist 2014 117 (2), 170-178 Sheehy, S. Scratching the surface of the lichen diversity at Lava Beds National Monument. Bulletin of the California Lichen Society 2014 21 (2), 35-39. If you are an OIT student, contact Dr. Byrne if you'd like to assist Mr. Sheehy with this interesting project! Dr. Byrne is excited to announce that Grahame Russell, Director of Rights Action, will be giving a talk on his work in Central America on Monday, October 26 at 7 pm on the OIT Campus (Room 252, DOW Center for Health Professions).
This free event is open to the public. It is sponsored by Pacific University's MSW Program and is hosted by the Oregon Tech Honors Program. Grahame Russell is the founder and co-director of Rights Action since 1995. He is a non-practicing lawyer, author, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC). For over 10 years Grahame lived in Mexico and Central America working with grassroots organizations and NGOs on environment, development, and human rights issues. Rights Action is a U.S. and Canadian based human rights organization, that provides direct funds to and does solidarity work with grassroots indigenous and non-indigenous community organizations in Central America and Mexico, who are implementing their own development, health and wellness, environmental, and human rights projects. Here's an article in the local newspaper about our Applegate's milkvetch research.
OIT has highlighted Rizka's and Dr. Byrne's research on their website.
The lab has received funding from the US Fish and Wildlife Service to create a population model of naturally occurring populations of Applegate's milkvetch in the Upper Klamath Basin. You can learn more about Astragalus applegatei here. Research will begin in 2016. Check back in early 2016 for student positions associated with the project.
Congratulations to Rizka, who graduated with a BS in Environmental Science on Saturday from OIT! Rizka is continuing her research on Applegate's milkvetch over the summer, and hopes to apply to masters programs in Australia this fall.
National Bike Commute week is next week (May 11-15)! The local newspaper wrote a great article highlighting our endeavors to make Klamath Falls a healthier place. If you are local, please consider running, walking, or biking to work or school next week, and attend one of our free breakfast stations on Friday, May 15!
My General Ecology course took a field trip to collect data in permanent monitoring plots for Limnanthes floccosa ssp. bellingeriana at two sites that burned last summer on the Cascade Siskiyou National Monument. Anecdotally, it appears that the fire may have increased population density of this rare species! Students will compare population density between 2014 and 2015 in two unburned and two burned sites in the coming weeks in lab. By continuing this ongoing monitoring project in future years, we should be able to better understand population dynamics of this species
|
Archives
April 2024
|