Metz Secures Sixth National Science Foundation Grant

Associate Professor of Biology Margaret Metz has been awarded $47K in competitive research funding from the Population and Community Ecology Cluster program of the National Science Foundation (NSF). This project is a collaboration between Dr. Metz and her colleagues at Boise State University, University of California, Davis, Cal Poly, University of Georgia, and North Carolina State University. The collaborative grant, totaling more than $1.3 million across all institutions, will support their study on forests affected by interacting components of global change that can lead to shifts in landscape composition.

Dr. Metz and her colleagues have long collaborated in research on the iconic coastal forest landscapes of central California where an emerging forest disease called Sudden Oak Death has killed hundreds of thousands of trees. Their research found that trees killed by the disease alter wildfire behavior by changing available fuels in a landscape that is increasingly warmer, drier, and experiencing more frequent and more severe wildfires. Across the team’s nearly two decades of research in this system, they have observed abrupt shifts in some parts of the landscape, such that areas once dominated by redwood forests or oak woodlands instead have become dominated by shrubs that are more typical of habitats further from the coast.

The current project seeks to understand the conditions that lead to permanent shifts from forests to shrublands rather than the temporary shifts that can occur as a forest recovers from a disturbance such as fire or disease. The goal is to better predict the impacts of multiple interacting disturbances in forested landscapes. The research group engages with local, state, federal, and tribal partners throughout northern California and southwestern Oregon to translate research findings into adaptive forest management practices in the context of Sudden Oak Death and wildfire.

It is worth noting that this new DEB award is Dr. Metz’s sixth competitive NSF grant since 2014, following earlier support for her research in this forest disease system, as well as additional grants from NSF for her long-term research in the Amazonian forests of Ecuador and more recent work in the old growth conifer forests of southwestern Washington. All of Dr. Metz’s external funding has enabled Lewis & Clark students to actively engage in field research and data analysis.