ESA Southwestern Chapter

🆕 historical fire ecology research, in our #OpenAccess journal "Ecosphere" ⬇️

Headshot of Adrienne Sponberg

“I am honored to accept this position and look forward to working with the ESA community to advance the Society’s mission in the years ahead.”

We are pleased to announce that Adrienne Sponberg, PhD, has been named the new executive director of ESA. Read the press release: https://ow.ly/17eq50Yct2F

www.esacareercenter.org 21 jobs to view and apply for now with ESACareers Career Center

New & featured on the ESA Career Center:
* Assistant Professor of Biology Texas Tech University
* Landscape Ecologist Simon Fraser University
* Dean UC Santa Barbara
* SW Fla Habitat Restoration Chair, Florida Gulf Coast University

Find these & many more new opportunities! https://ow.ly/R8RC50Y7HLW

come connect with ESA southwest chapter!

I’m at #AGU25 in NOLA and will be presenting my poster on hybrid oak physiology Monday morning! Would love to chat science, or just stop by to say hi!

Meet Tyson @tyson-terry.bsky.social 🥳
He studies plant requirements for recruitment and growth. He thoroughly enjoy ecology and the perspective that all the small components of a system interact to produce the beautiful larger picture we all observe. His background is in 🌳 and 🐞

Meet Eva 🌱
She's a PhD student in Eco-Informatics, working with Dr. Kiona Ogle. Her research applies Bayesian statistical methods to model the distributions of C3 and C4 grass species and their environmental drivers across National Parks in the western US. Website: eva-deegan.github.io

Meet the 2026 team for the ESA Southwest Chapter! 🌵☀️ We're super excited to serve our community and support your science in any way we can! Got questions or ideas? Send them our way! Stay tuned for introduction posts of each of our amazing new leaders!

Cover of the December 2025 issue of Ecological Applications

The December cover of "Ecological Applications" is feeling the burn! This prescribed fire in a Sierra Nevada forest shows the immediate carbon cost of wildfire mitigation—but new research reveals that treatments like this one also have long-term benefits

Find the full issue: tinyurl.com/ms6z58f2

Check out the #OpenAccess study here, in our journal "Ecological Applications"! doi.org/10.1002/eap....

Canopy seed survival conceptual model and key environmental gradients evaluated. (a) Hypothetical timeline of reproductive phenology and its relation to the presence of viable canopy seeds. (b, c) Location of study plots within the Caldor Fire (b) and Dixie Fire (c), with background shading indicating burn date. (d) Drone-derived orthomosaic from 2022 of a section of the Caldor Fire, exhibiting gradients between surviving green trees (green), killed trees with low canopy burn fraction (brown) and killed trees with high canopy burn fraction (gray-black), and indicating the locations of five edge plots (green points), interior plots with low canopy burn fraction (brown points) and interior plots with high canopy burn fraction (black points). (e) An example of a stand with low canopy burn fraction, with abundant yellow pine cones and seedlings. (f) An example of a plot with high canopy burn fraction, with yellow pine cones but few seedlings.

🆕 & #OpenAccess in "Ecological Applications": Tree seeds in the canopy can beat the heat, sometimes fueling surprise forest comebacks after extreme fires

📄Canopy seed survival through extreme fire in non-serotinous conifers: An unexpected source of forest resilience
doi.org/10.1002/eap....

Nutrient foraging continuum shifts with stand age in the temperate larch forest. Tree nutrient foraging depends on (c) root and (d) mycorrhizal traits, and (b) associated fungi and (a) interacts with soil-associated fungi. (e) When a young sapling grows, the root system architecture parameters, such as root biomass or root length density, allometrically grow with the shoot (gray line); however, the proportion of carbon investment to resource acquiring organs is likely to decrease as the forest ages, and the root segment metabolic activity, such as respiration, declines (brown line). As a result, the ectomycorrhizal fungi foraging type adapts to the combinations of root carbon supplies and the quantity and quality of soil nutrients; thus, long-distance exploration types are likely to become short-distance types when soil inorganic N accumulates over time. Overall, the nutrient foraging shifts from an “explorative strategy” of young stands to a "conservative strategy" of mature stands.

🆕 & #OpenAccess in "Ecological Monographs": Roots and fungi team up differently as forests age, resulting in movement along a nutrient acquisition continuum over time

📄Root-mycorrhizal foraging strategies shift with forest age more than with nitrogen manipulation
doi.org/10.1002/ecm....

(a) Example of long-term average, seasonal drought propagation for atmospheric demand (−PET), precipitation (Precip.), shallow soil moisture (SM), deep SM, and streamflow for a single high-elevation pixel in the Upper Donner und Blitzen watershed. (b) Example of moving window analysis to characterize the relationship between terrestrial and aquatic drought for a single high-elevation pixel in the Upper Donner und Blitzen watershed (as in panel a).

🆕 in Ecosphere's #MacrosystemsEcology track: How closely do soil moisture & streamflow sync up over time? A close look at seasonal dry-down

📄Aridity reduces lag times between aquatic and terrestrial dry-down among watersheds and across years in the northwest US
doi.org/10.1002/ecs2...

Thank you to everybody that attended our events at ESA2025 in Baltimore!

We'd love to hear from u on how we did! Please fill this survey w/ your thoughts: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

See you in SLC next year! :D

#ESA2025

COME JOIN US AT BALTIMORE! #ESA2025 #ESASW

Southwest Ecologist Awards ($700 travel award) We are excited to announce the 2025 Southwest Ecologist Travel award ($700)! Funding will be awarded to three early career (students and post-graduates) and/or federal agency ecologists whose work is ...

Last week to apply for our Chapter's travel awards!! Put in your application to help attend ESA 2025!

App closes on June 13. Share widely!

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Also, friendly reminder that early-bird registration is now open!
esa.org/baltimore202...

This award is not exclusive to just students, we encourage all eligible early career ecologists to apply, especially federal agency workers.

Southwest Ecologist Awards ($700 travel award) We are excited to announce the 2025 Southwest Ecologist Travel award ($700)! Funding will be awarded to three early career (students and post-graduates) and/or federal agency ecologists whose work is ...

Applications are now open for the 2025 ESA Southwest Travel awards for ecologists and members of our Chapter presenting or just attending ESA this year!
If you fit the description or know someone who does, apply and share!
Looking forward to seeing you in Baltimore!
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Hi all! We are finally here on Bluesky and we would like to introduce our 2024-2025 leadership team! Better late than never before we run another election later this year.

We have awesome events planned for ESA2025 in Baltimore. So, stay tuned!