Members of the Landscapes of Change Lab
PI: Joan Dudney
I am an assistant professor in the Bren School and the Environmental Studies Program at UCSB. Prior to UCSB, I was a Smith Conservation Postdoctoral Fellow and received my Ph.D. in 2019 from UC Berkeley. My research is focused on quantifying global change impacts on plant communities, particularly conifer forests. I conduct extensive field work in the Sierra Nevada, where recent forest mortality has been unprecedentedly high due to a combination of factors, including drought, fire, bark beetles, and disease. I am also interested in applying causal inference to ecological analyses that seek to disentangling complex drivers of change. In my spare time, I love backpacking with my camera in the high elevation forests of the Sierra Nevada.
Postdocs
Julie is a Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow in the Bren School. She has a Ph.D. from the School of Geography, Development, and Environment and at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. Julie uses tree rings to understand past climate, and to identify and interpret climate extremes. She also uses a wide range of tools, from cellular measurements of tree growth to global climate models to accurately reconstruct past climates. Julie holds a B.A. in Geography/Environmental Studies from UCLA and a M.A. in Geography from the University of Arizona. Julie was also a mapping technician at an international aid and development nonprofit, and a research assistant at both UCLA and California State University, Northridge. Find out more here.
Robby is a postdoc and USGS research scientist working on our collaborative Powell Synthesis Working group project, with Lauren Toth, Deron Burkepile, and Nate Lemoine. He is a quantitative scientist with research interests including community-based conservation, climate change, coral-reef ecology, and fisheries management. He is keenly interested in data analytics and machine learning, which he uses to analyze complex social-ecological linkages within natural systems. Robby is currently collating a global database of ecological observational data to understand mechanisms of ecosystem stability and transitions in a warming world.
Ph.D. students
Michelle's research interests include forest ecology, dendroclimatology, and climate change. Michelle is currently conducting an assessment of white pine blister rust (an invasive pathogen) and mountain pine beetle outbreaks that are contributing to high sugar pine mortality in Yosemite National Park. She is also extending this research to identify genetically resistant sugar pine that can play a critical role in supporting restoration initiatives. This research has important implications for climate adaptation and sustainable forest management.
As a first-generation college graduate, Michelle is deeply committed to fostering diversity in STEM. She's passionate about making the outdoors and science accessible to underrepresented individuals to cultivate inclusivity and environmental stewardship.
Olivia Ross is a vegetation ecologist interested in the spatial distribution, composition and function of plant and forest communities in response to climate change and disturbance events, including wildfire. She aims to investigate emerging forest-wildfire-climate interactions and conduct research in partnership with natural resource agencies to directly inform future management practices. Olivia is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellows Program.
Olivia previously worked on various research projects in the Sierra Nevada, studying the impact of climate change on alpine plant communities and conifer forests. She previously worked on prescribed burns, igniting her curiosity about post-fire landscapes and passion for the expansion of cooperative burning and practice of "good fire." Olivia teaches botany and fieldwork skills to high school students and is passionate about fostering an inclusive environment in the outdoors.
Affiliated Ph.D. students
Jenny is a Ph.D. student at UC Davis in the Latimer and Magney labs. She earned her BA in psychology from Stanford University. Her diverse undergraduate work includes studying and working on a sea turtle conservation project in Costa Rica, learning to sail and SCUBA dive in the Caribbean, conducting archival research in Spain, studying at Hopkins Marine station, and co-authoring a paper on seahorse genetics. Since graduating, she has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, and the US Geological Survey where her job duties have ranged from tagging endangered sea turtles at Padre Island National Seashore to leading a field crew focused on assessing the health of white pines in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. She is working with the LOC lab on a sugar pine restoration project in Yosemite and a mountain pine beetle resistance study in Sequoia Kings Canyon National Parks.
Kaitlyn is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wyoming advised by Lauren Shoemaker. She started her Ph.D. in fall 2020 and her research is centered around theoretical community ecology. She is broadly interested in how species fluctuate through space and time and what drives community composition. She has specific interests in spatiotemporal synchrony and stability in systems experiencing environmental change. Goals for her research include decomposing the roles of environment, species interactions, synchrony, and evenness in driving overall ecosystem stability. She has been working with the LOC lab on a project focused on changing synchrony in whitebark pine growth in response to climate change. She is also developing a project focused on global patterns of tree-ring synchrony.
Undergraduate students
Emily Sorenson
Emily is a senior in the Environmental Studies program. She has been working closely with Michelle Mohr and Jenny Cribbs on projects in Yosemite and Sequoia Kings Canyon National Parks. She is currently working on a senior thesis project focused on white pine blister rust dynamics in sugar pine seedlings.
Emma Sayre, UC Santa Barabara
Tazlina Dentinger, UC Davis
Sophia Acker, UC Davis