GEOG 632: Environmental Measurement and Monitoring in the Northern Sierra

Andrew Oliphant:  Andrew (andrewo@sfsu.edu) has been a professor in the Department of Geography & Environment, now School of the Environment at San Francisco State University since 2002, where he teaches and researches environmental meteorology and climatology as well as field techniques. His research field is in micrometeorology and biometeorology, and includes measuring ecosystem carbon sequestration and water use, surface energy exchanges and associated microclimates. He uses a variety of monitoring instruments and micrometeorological techniques. His field projects have included mountain meadows of the northern Sierra Nevada, the Southern Alps of New Zealand, the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, tropical islands of Northern Australia, deserts of central Iran, and urban sites in San Francisco and Black Rock City, NE. 

Jerry Davis: Jerry Davis (jerry@sfsu.edu), professor of geography and environmental science at SFSU, is a biogeomorphologist who studies the interaction between biotic and geomorphic systems, with an applied focus on the effectiveness of restoration methods. Over the last 20 years, he has been investigating northern Sierra meadows undergoing restoration ranging from pond & plug installations to beaver dams and analogs, with most projects based out of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus, most recently involving drones capturing color and multispectral imagery for assessing stream morphometry and vegetation/soil moisture relationships.

Michael Vasey: Mike Vasey (mvasey@sfsu.edu) is a field scientist with a passion for resolving conflicts between the needs of human society and the conservation of nature. Now emeritus since 2021, he taught a popular non-majors conservation biology class at SFSU for two decades, including week-long classes at the Sierra Nevada Field Campus (SNFC) in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. For his MA from SFSU, independent studies, and PhD studying maritime chaparral, Mike has utilized a variety of ecological field methods. After retiring, Mike developed a SNFC class focused on management options for Sierra communities vulnerable to increasing wildfire risk and, in particular, the North Yuba Forest Partnership (see https://www.yubaforest.org/). Long term monitoring of control and treatment plots is key to evaluating the success of this project and we will use the latest field methods to put this into practice at sites near the SNFC.