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Tamzen Stringham

Story by Ashley Andrews

Wildfires have unleashed devastating losses on Â鶹ӳ»­ ranches, grazing areas, and habitat for wildlife and recreation. Knowing how to care for Â鶹ӳ»­'s land before and after it is affected by fire and other disturbances is key to reducing wildland fire risk and repairing lands post-fire. This is where and , and the land managers they teach come in.

Stringham is a professor and Snyder is an ecologist in the College. With support from its , Stringham leads and Snyder works in the College's .

In collaboration with the U.S. Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management Â鶹ӳ»­, Stringham and Snyder developed in 2019 the first training course for wildland firefighters who work on dry lands. Through the training, called the Rangeland Ecology & Management Program, Stringham and Snyder are instilling the decades of rangeland ecology research their lab has conducted and distilled into Â鶹ӳ»­'s land managers.

This includes the pair's state-and-transition models. The models describe how different combinations of plants and soil respond to events like fire, grazing, soil disturbances and invasive plants. The models also describe, when recovery is possible, pathways to help restore lands.

The training is much needed by Â鶹ӳ»­'s lands and its workforce. It helps the Bureau's employees meet enhanced educational requirements for fire program management specialists. Without the specialists, it would be hard to reduce Â鶹ӳ»­ rangeland's likelihood of ignition and, should a fire start, to ensure adequate firefighting resources and leadership to minimize damage.

Story by Tiffany Kozsan

Christina Restaino, a fire ecologist, joined the College in 2019. She and her Living With Fire Program team presented several educational offerings in 2020 to help Â鶹ӳ»­ns reduce the wildfire risk.

The program presented an online speaker series during Â鶹ӳ»­ Wildfire Awareness Month in May. The "Living With Fire Conversations" sessions included:

• How to prepare for a power outage
• Fire restriction orders on federal lands in Â鶹ӳ»­
• Defensible space and reducing the wildfire hazard

Then, in response to a drier than normal winter and a wild wildfire season, and as part of National Preparedness Month in September, the program presented the virtual workshop series, "Five Ways to Prepare Your Family and Property for Wildfire."

"Wildfire is a part of our everyday life now, it seems," Restaino said. "Â鶹ӳ»­ns, like others around the world, need to be proactive to help protect themselves and their homes."

 Christina Restaino

Story by Mike Wolderbeek

Â鶹ӳ»­ ranchers, water providers and public land managers rely on the U.S. Drought Monitor to keep track of climate and weather. The drought monitor also triggers relief programs that can help agriculture-related businesses in Â鶹ӳ»­. 

"The Drought Monitor isn’t a simply a map; it's the best assessment of where there is drought, and the severity of drought,"  , who leads Extension’s Living with Drought program, said. "Volunteer-submitted information helps to complement more traditional metrics and can bridge some of the data gaps across the state."

Ormerod conducts research and education on water, climate and drought hazards for Extension and is an assistant professor of geography with the University's College of Science. Besides helping meteorologists and others better prepare for and respond to Â鶹ӳ»­'s confusing weather, she hopes to help various groups, such as farmers, ranchers, emergency management personnel and research scientists, to make better-informed decisions.

"If we can collect more data on our precipitation and weather, and analyze and explain it, it can serve several purposes," Ormerod said. "As the driest state in the nation, it is especially important to report zeros, or the lack of precipitation. This is critical information necessary to track and respond to drought."

She said they are recruiting volunteer observers from "anywhere and everywhere" across the state through either the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network or a related citizen science platform designed for drought monitoring.

Ormerod said, "My message to potential weather observers: you can help, get involved – we need you."

Story by Tiffany Kozsan

The forest of the Sierra Â鶹ӳ»­ mountains is an important resource for the surrounding communities in Â鶹ӳ»­ and California. Thinning the forest by removing trees by hand or using heavy machinery is one of the few tools available to manage forests. However, finding the best way to thin forests by removing select trees to maximize the forest’s benefits for water quantity, water quality, wildfire risk and wildlife habitat remains a challenge for resource managers. The U.S. Forest Service is leading an effort to balance all these challenges in landscape-scale forest restoration planning as part of the Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership.

As part of this effort, the College's recently led a team in developing a modeling tool to focus on the issue of water quantity. The tool predicts how different approaches to thinning the forest impact snowpack accumulation in Lake Tahoe, which controls how much water is available for downstream communities such as Reno.

"The snowpack we’ve relied upon is under pressure from years of fire suppression that increased tree density, combined with the effects of climate change and warming temperatures," Harpold, a natural resources & environmental science assistant professor, said.

Adrian Harpold

He explained that too many trees means less snow reaches the ground. In addition, when many trees are clumped together, they warm up and release heat, which can melt the snow on the ground. However, too few trees means the snowpack is less protected from the sun and wind, which also melt snow.

The tool, developed with funding from our College’s and the U.S. Forest Service, was built to specifically model the west shore of Lake Tahoe, which the team felt was a good sample of the Sierra Â鶹ӳ»­ forest. The team initially created a small-scale high-resolution model using data collected with 3D laser scanners, called "LiDAR."

Story by Mike Wolterbeek

After several years of experimentation, scientists have engineered thale cress, or Arabidopsis thaliana, to behave like a succulent, improving water-use efficiency, salinity tolerance and reducing the effects of drought. The tissue succulence engineering method devised for this small flowering plant can be used in other plants to improve drought and salinity tolerance with the goal of moving this approach into food and bioenergy crops.

Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Professor published in 2020 a paper on his research team's breakthrough. The team included Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Assistant Professor .

The work will be combined with another of Cushman’s projects: engineering another trait called crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM), a water-conserving mode of photosynthesis that can be applied to plants to improve water-use efficiency.

With demand for agricultural products expected to increase by as much as 70% to serve a growing human population, which is predicted to reach about 9.6 billion by 2050, Cushman and his team are pursuing these biotechnology solutions to address potential future food and bioenergy shortages.

John Cushman

Story by Hannah Alfaro

Native insect pollinators, such as bees, butterflies, wasps and flies, are crucial in helping to produce fruits and vegetables and serve as pest control on many farms. In 2017, the College’s Extension unit received a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to construct gardens of native plants to attract these insects, evaluate the survival and growth of native plant species on an ongoing basis, and assess the plants' attractiveness to native pollinators and other beneficial insects.

The project, headed by Associate Professor and Extension State Specialist , allowed Extension to build six demonstration gardens at both the residential scale and in agricultural settings around the state.

The gardens are located at the , the , Jacobs Family Berry Farm in Gardnerville, a housing development in Las Vegas, the Lost City Museum in Overton and the Walker River State Recreation Area in Yerington. A seventh garden is in development at the proposed Truckee Meadows Nature Study Area in Reno.

Heidi Kratsch