Melissa and Shelby spend a few days in beautiful Alaska filming videos for our Reburns project.
https://www.melissalucash.com/outreach/2019/8/2/filming-videos-for-our-reburns-alaska-project
Symposium on Forest Management at World Congress of IALE in Italy
Dr. Lucash organized a symposium with Drs. Scheller (NCSU) and Betts (OSU) on the synergies between climate and management at the World Congress of the International Association of Landscape Ecology in Milano, Italy. Beautiful place, wonderful colleagues and delicious food.
Outreach with middle school STEM club
Melissa conducted a hands-on activity about wildfire with an after-school STEM club for middle school girls in Hillsboro, OR. Girls designed their own forests to burn at different severities and then tested them. Lots of fun and we didn’t set off the smoke alarm. Success!
Melissa and Shelby are heading to CO to present at IALE!
A Glimpse into the Future: Using Spatial Modeling and Virtual Reality to Visualize Forests under Climate Change . Melissa Lucash, Jiawei Huang, Alexander Klippel,Robert M. Scheller, Robert Nicholas, Kelsey L. Ruckert, Erica A.H. Smithwick,
Using habitat suitability modeling to evaluate potential moose habitat and patterns of wildfire in interior Alaska. Shelby Weiss and Melissa Lucash
The Predictable, and not so Predictable, Spatial Distribution of Short Interval Fires Across the US West. Brian Buma, Melissa Lucash, Katherine Hayes and Shelby Weiss
Dr. Lucash's essay on the challenges of re-entering academia after being a stay-at-home mother
Melissa Lucash, PhD
Research Assistant Professor
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA
Follow Melissa on Twitter
Being a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) for five years has left an indelible mark on my career. When I got pregnant during the fourth year of my PhD, my husband and I played “Who gets the best job first?” I lost and we moved from Syracuse, NY to Portland, OR. As a pregnant woman alone in a new city, I worked on my dissertation each day at the grocery store, befriending the local retired men’s group. I defended my dissertation when my daughter was nine months old. As she grew, I was a SAHM by day, but two nights a week I pretended I was a scientist again and worked on my dissertation publications. My friends thought I was crazy to spend my precious free time working on papers. But I knew I didn’t want to be a SAHM forever and needed to keep publishing. Even after my second daughter was born, I continued to write each night at the glacial pace of an exhausted mother who slept in two-hour increments every night.
Read my full essay here:
https://theearlypages.blogspot.com/2019/03/holey-science-gaps-in-research-career.html#Melissa
Paul Pettus has joined our lab
Paul has officially joined our lab as of 2/1/18 and will be working on our DoD grant with NC State University and the New England Conservancy. He will be leading the model simulation work that will improve our understanding of how climate change will affect one of the largest tracts of longleaf pine stands remaining in the U.S. His work will explore different forest harvest and prescribed burning treatments to ensure the long-term viability of lthe endangered red-Cockaded woodpecker, which thrives in longleaf stands on Fort Bragg.
We are happy to have him join our lab!
New member of our lab!
Welcome to Paul Pettus who will be joining our lab on Feb 1, 2018 to work on our DoD grant. We look forward to having him bring his GIS expertise and his adorable pooch to our lab.
Our NSF grant is featured in Orion Magazine
Our NSF CNH grant (affectionately called ViFF, Visualizing Indigenous Forest Futures) was featured in Orion magazine this month. Read quotes by the PI Erica Smithwick, Co-PI Chris Caldwell, and many others from the Menominee.
Come work in our lab!
I'm hiring a full-time technician here at Portland State to conduct LANDIS-II vegetation modeling in my lab. Our research will be focused on Fort Bragg, NC, where managers are concerned about the negative impacts of climate change and hurricanes on Red-cockaded woodpecker habitat. Though the work will be based out of PSU, we will be collaborating with professors at NC State University and Harvard Forest.
The job will start on 2/1/19 and end when the grant ends on 9/30/18. The position is listed as “open until filled” but if I get a decent pool of applicants, I'll conduct interviews the week of 1/21/19. Details below.
SOCCR-2 report released, Dr. Lucash co-authored the chapter on forests along with 21 other scientists
Dr. Lucash was one of the co-authors of Chapter 9: Forests in the Second State of the Carbon Report (SOCCR2).
SOCCR2 is an authoritative decadal assessment of carbon cycle science across North America, developed by over 200 experts from the U.S., Canadian and Mexican governments, national laboratories, universities, private sector, and research institutions.
