Southern Sierra Science Symposium planned for Visalia

SCIENCE GUIDING FIRE MANAGEMENT RESPONSE IN THE SIERRA NEVADA
SCOTT STEPHENS
Associate Professor of Fire Science
Co-director, UC Center for Fire Research and Outreach
Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley

Dr. Stephens is a native of California, first living in the tiny town of Scotia in Humboldt County and then Napa. He earned a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Sacramento State University in 1985, a M.S. in Bioengineering from Sacramento State in 1988, and then attended graduate school at UC Davis from 1988-1991 studying hydrology, soil science, and plant science. He earned a PhD degree in Wildland Resources Science from UC Berkeley in 1995 specializing in fire science. After graduating he worked as a post-doc researcher with the USFS Pacific Southwest Research Station for 2 years and then was an assistant professor of forest ecology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo from 1997-2000. From 2000 to the present he has been a fire science professor at UC Berkeley. Stephens' general interests are in the interactions of wildland fire and ecosystems. This includes how prehistoric fires once interacted with ecosystems, how current wildland fires are affecting ecosystems, and how future fires and management can change this interaction. He is also interested in wildland fire policy and how it can be improved to meet the challenges of the coming decades; how fire will be affected by changing climates is another research area. Stephens' recently returned from a sabbatical in Australia where he studied fire science and fire management for 4 months and has given invited testimony to the US Congress on 3 occasions.

CURRENT SCIENCE IN FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT OF SIERRAN FORESTS
Malcolm North
Pacific Southwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service

Malcolm is a research scientist with the USFS Sierra Nevada Research Center and an associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at U.C. Davis. He received his PhD at the University of Washington in 1993 studying under Dr. Jerry Franklin. His research interests are the effects of disturbance on forest ecosystem structure, composition and function.

BUILDING FOREST RESILIENCY IN THE ERA OF GLOBAL CHANGE: AN APPROACH TO MANAGING GIANT SEQUOIA POPULATIONS IN THE SOUTHERN SIERRA NEVADA
John J. Battles and Robert A. York
UC Berkeley, Center for Forestry

John Battles is an associate professor of forest ecology in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management and co-director of the Center for Forestry at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on the community ecology and population dynamics of temperate forests.

Rob York is the manager of UC Berkeley's research forests and an adjunct assistant professor of forestry in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on applied forest ecology and management of Sierra mixed conifer forests.