Awards

California has adopted Dyslexia Guidelines for future teachers. These must be incorporated into each basic credential program (education specialist, multiple subject, single subject). The legislature has made funding available so that teacher education programs can align their coursework with the guidelines (AB 128). Course revision and program revision to include pedagogy related to literacy and dyslexia may result from this work.

This research seeks to revise fundamental scaling laws in Ecology by quantifying the broad controls on tree-level 3D structure. We will accomplish this through the development of a global-scale 3D trait databases based on terrestrial laser scanning data assembled from an international community of researchers. The project will result in an open access global 3D trait database that will support improved biodiversity characterization and mapping.  Lisa Bentley will advise in all matters related to scaling theory in the proposed research and contribute to planned research manuscripts.

The 2022 Summer Tinker Academy is a two-week program designed to engage and inspire middle school students through Maker principles, to encourage the exploration and development of technical, mathematical and artistic abilities. For Summer 2022, twenty-four middle school students from across Sonoma County have been selected by CTE Foundation to attend the hands-on sessions to be taught by SSU professors and student assistants in the SSU Makerspace. They will participate in a variety of activities including coding, modeling, crafting, sewing, and building.

This project will connect physiological and novel remote sensing tools to better understand the effects of wildfire and fuels management on forested ecosystems in California under a changing climate. This will integrate Dr. Bentley’s long-term research and education goals related to the responses of forests to environmental change using terrestrial laser scanning, metabolic scaling ecology, modeling and virtual reality based outreach.

Mapping and monitoring the structure, function, and biodiversity of Earth's ecosystems is one of the most important research objectives for space science this decade, in particular to address the rapid decline of biodiversity under anthropogenic pressure and climate change. To respond to the urgent need of mapping and monitoring biodiversity in a timely manner, the BioSoundSCape project will use a novel, generalizable, and species agnostic approach to retrieve acoustic and plant spectral and structural diversity.

The Anthropological Studies Center (ASC) will research, survey, and record the Jones Bar mining site for the Sierra District of State Parks. The site burned in the 2020 Jones Bar fire and new cultural features and artifacts may be exposed. It may have also been damaged by the fire. ASC will assess any damage. The site record will be provided to Parks for their records and filed with the appropriate information center.

The Green Music Center (GMC) will use funds to present the 10th anniversary season of performing arts programming. Especially during these challenging times, the Green Music Center's performances are helping to promote healing and empathy for one another.

This project aims to have student led mapping products of eruptive basalts in two areas of the Springerville Volcanic Field (SVF), the Blue Ridge Mountain shield volcano, and arguably some of the youngest flows in the southeast region of the field. The SVF is a well-mapped monogenetic volcanic field, with the two aforementioned areas notable missing pieces as they provide a view of a rare polygenetic eruptive vent and some of the flows that are petrogenetically at the end of the fields lifespan.

To date, very little is known as to how coastal processes from land can influence kelp forest dynamics in northern California, presenting a large knowledge gap as to potential drivers of kelp forest resilience and restoration potential. Our goal for this project is to evaluate methods for establishing bull kelp refugia close to Drakes Estero along Point Reyes National Seashore, and characterize the connectivity between the estuary and nearshore reefs to inform restoration efforts.

Accurate estimates of forest carbon stock underpin the development of a global carbon market, yet estimates can vary in accuracy and utility. The proposed research will use a space-based laser (NASA's GEDI) to refine biomass estimations for Sequoia sempervirens redwood forests. These forests are of global importance because they represent areas of extremely high biomass (i.e. carbon stocks), and can provide a proof-of-concept approach that can be extended to validate carbon in other high-biomass forests. As contract work, Dr.