The Team
The Sierra Streams Institute team members involved in the project are listed below:
Shannon Henke, Restoration Ecologist: Shannon is botanist and restoration ecologist leading SSI's restoration work, with a focus on vegetative management and process-based restoration. She has a B.S. in biological sciences with an emphasis on botany from CSU, Chico and is currently pursuing a Master of Natural Resource Stewardship with a focus in Ecological Restoration through Colorado State University’s distance learning program. She has over ten years of botanically-related work experience included conducting vegetation sampling and monitoring, ecological restoration plan development and implementation, invasive plant management, special status species surveys, data management, GIS, project management, and preparing CEQA/NEPA technical reports. She enjoys backpacking, playing music, watercolor painting, gardening, and is a self-proclaimed plant nerd.
Jeff Lauder, Ecologist: Jeff is an ecologist, with a focus on drought, tree physiology, tree carbon use, and disturbance ecology. He did his undergraduate education and master’s research at CSU Chico, where he studied the impacts of forest treatments on soil properties and forest growth, and did his thesis research on the impacts of disturbances such as volcanic eruption and flooding on forest structure in Papua New Guinea. He did prior work with Sierra Streams Institute as an AmeriCorps member in the 2012-2013 term, when he led wildlife monitoring and data analysis projects, and stayed on as staff until 2015, when he left to pursue his PhD. After his dissertation research on physiological drivers of drought-induced mortality in Sierra Nevada conifers, he returned to Sierra Streams to work on projects integrating forest health into watershed management and restoration.
Alex Cisneros-Carey, AmeriCorps River Scientist: Alex is the 2020-2021 AmeriCorps River Scientist for Sierra Streams Institute. She works on SSI's restoration and river monitoring projects, participating in water quality collection, native vegetation planting, wildlife monitoring and climate data analysis. She completed her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley's Rausser College of Natural Resources, where she studied Environmental Science and Forestry. For her thesis research, she studied how riverbank consumers track invertebrate subsidies off algae blooms in a Northern California river. She is an enthusiastic field ecologist, and participated in several field seasons conifer roots for isotopic analysis of Nitrogen uptake, snorkel surveying for salmonids, and even climbing a giant sequoia. While at Berkeley, she also worked as a teaching assistant for a natural history course, and is excited to continue teaching wildlife identification through Zooniverse.
Taylor Schobel, Rural Health Coordinator: Taylor Schobel works as our rural health coordinator on the CHIME-3 (Community Health Impacts from Mining Exposure) study. She received a BS from University of California, Berkeley in molecular environmental biology with a concentration in animal health and behavior, alongside completing her pre-med requisites. At Berkeley, she spent years researching reproductive neuroendocrinology in bats and zebra finches focused on the broad theme of reproductive/immune trade-offs. Other field work has led her to the north coast of California, observing mating behaviors of northern elephant seals, swimming the south fork of the Eel River for a three-month intensive fish study, and water quality monitoring in several watersheds. When she is not working, she is most likely at the river, birding, or hiking with her dogs.
Chloe Tremper, Water Quality Lab and Volunteer Manager: Chloe was born and raised in Virginia but developed her love of the outdoors spending time in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania. She headed north for college in search of bigger mountains and graduated from the University of Vermont in 2015 with a BS in Wildlife Biology and Natural Resources Ecology. Chloe has several years of ecological fieldwork and environmental education experience under her belt; working with creatures ranging from deer mice to California Condors to ringtails and working with students from kindergarten to adult. In 2016, Chloe served as the Education Coordinator/River Scientist AmeriCorps at SSI. Following her term, she took a few months to adventure and then worked for the California Department of Fish & Wildlife and as a substitute teacher. In her free time, Chloe enjoys backpacking, whitewater rafting/kayaking, birding, and crocheting.
Annabelle Owyoung, Volunteer Intern: Annabelle is a senior at Bear River High School and is interning with us, helping to collect vegetation and wildlife data. Annabelle also volunteered with us this past summer, pre-Jones Fire, as a water quality monitor and she was a huge help with catching us up on our Deer Creek algae data backlog!
