Shasta Chapter CNPS is pleased to announce that this year’s Chapter-sponsored Northern California Botanists (NCB) Research Scholarship went to Kaylie DeLuca, a Master’s student at CSU, Chico, who is working under the mentorship of Dr. Kristen Kaczynski.
Northern California Botanists provides a scholarship program for undergraduate and graduate students conducting research on botanical topics in northern California. Each year, Shasta Chapter CNPS provides funding to Northern California Botanists for an additional $1000 Research Scholarship. In addition to NCB’s general scholarship criteria, the recipient of the Shasta Chapter-funded scholarship must meet at least one of the following two criteria: (1) the student’s research topic is relevant to the flora within the boundaries of the Shasta Chapter; or (2) the student hails from the Shasta Chapter CNPS area.
Kaylie meets both criteria: she grew up in Lassen County, and is now working on botanical species in Lassen Volcanic National Park (LVNP). Kaylie’s research project is entitled An Evaluation of a Restored Wet Meadow within a Recently Burned Landscape Matrix, Southern Cascades, California: A Comparative History.
Kaylie is conducting research that will support the restoration and long-term management of the Drakesbad wet meadow in LVNP, where substantial restoration efforts had been implemented in 2012. Kaylie is currently collecting information on the meadow’s soil seedbank and aboveground vegetation composition and abundance that she will compare to a pool of historical data obtained pre and post restoration. She will also generate data from previously established groundwater monitoring wells located throughout the wet meadow to study links between the meadow’s hydrology and the change in wetland species coverage over time. Additional focus will be placed on six predominant species (three obligate species and three facultative wetland species). This study will track the meadow’s response to restoration; highlight the importance of long-term monitoring; and provide insight to the location’s resilience after perturbations such as the Dixie Fire, which burned through lands surrounding but not within the meadow in 2021. The overall goal is to support restoration efforts of LVNP’s resource managers.
The Shasta Chapter CNPS wishes Kaylie all the best in her future botanical endeavors. With any luck, we’ll get her to give us a presentation on her work someday in the not-too-far future! ~Shasta Chapter CNPS