Southern Sierra Science Symposium planned for Visalia

Dr. Anthony Westerling is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering and Geography at UC Merced. His research interests include applied climatology; climate-wildfire interactions; statistical modeling for seasonal forecasts, paleofire reconstructions, and climate change impact assessments; and resource management and policy. Dr. Westerling holds a B.A. from University of California, Los Angeles; and a Ph.D. from University of California, San Diego. Prior to coming to Merced, he worked for six years as a researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He is a principle investigator with the NOAA Regional Integrated Science and Assessment program for California, the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station, and the California Energy Commission's California Climate Change Center.

CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS ON THE SIERRA NEVADA
NATHAN L. STEPHENSON - USGS Western Ecological Research Center, Sequoia – Kings Canyon Field Station

Nate Stephenson is a Research Ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, stationed in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks since 1979. His research has focused on climatic controls of vegetation distribution, consequences of lengthy fire exclusion on forests, use of prescribed fire as a tool for forest restoration, and environmental controls of forest dynamics. He has served as a contributing scientist on the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project, the Science Advisory Board for the new Giant Sequoia National Monument and the steering committee for the National Study of the Consequences of Fire and Fire Surrogate Treatments. Additionally, he is a founding member and steering committee member of CIRMOUNT (the Consortium for Integrated Climate Research in Western Mountains). His current research efforts are primarily in concert with USGS's Western Mountain Initiative, a global change research project centered on national parks in the mountainous western U.S.

CURRENT STATE OF FIRE SCIENCE IN THE SOUTHERN SIERRA NEVADA
JAN VAN WAGTENDONK - USGS, Western Ecological research center, Yosemite Field Station

Although a native of California, Dr. van Wagtendonk grew up in Indiana, where he began his study of forestry at Purdue University. Summer seasonal work as a smokejumper for the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management convinced him to finish his undergraduate work at Oregon State University, where he received his B.S. in Forest Management in 1963. After serving four and a half years as an officer in the U.S. Army with the 101st Airborne Division and as an advisor to the Vietnamese army, he entered graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. There Dr. van Wagtendonk obtained his M.S. in Range Management in 1968 and his Ph.D. in Wildland Resource Science with a specialty in fire ecology in 1972. From 1972 through 1993 he was employed as a research scientist with the National Park Service at Yosemite National Park. Since 1994, Dr. van Wagtendonk has been employed as a research scientist with the U. S. Geological Survey at Yosemite. His areas of research have included prescriptions for burning in wildland ecosystems, recreational impacts in wilderness, and the application of geographic information systems to resources management. His work currently focuses on the role of fire in Sierra Nevada ecosystems.