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April 2025: The KLEE paper, "Disentangling disturbances in drylands: Interactions among herbivory, drought, and termite activity in savanna plant communities" by Wells et al., appears online in Journal of Ecology.
April 2025: Sophia Richter, a doctoral student in Tyler Coverdale's lab at Notre Dame, is awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to work in KLEE. Congratualtions, Sophia!
April 2025: WorldClim2, a global climate database published in 2017, by Steve Fick (Young Lab alumnus) and Robert Hijmans, reaches 15,000 citations on Google Scholar!
April 2025: KLEE sponsors research assistant Julius Maleyon to attend the training course, "Certificate in Office Computer Applications".
More news from 2023: Dr. Toby Kiers, onetime Mpala collaborator, was awarded the 2023 Spinoza Award. Congratulations, Toby!
News from 2023: Dr. Sara Germain, 2014 KLEE NSF REU participant, has been an Assistant Professor at the University of Wyoming since 2023.
February 2025: Mary Waithira Ngugi receives a ForestGEO Research Award for "Influence of Woody Vegetation Diversity on Soil Microbial Communities".
January 2025 KLEE paper, "Megaherbivores suppress precipitation-driven plant irruptions in an African savanna" (Wells et al.), is accepted for publication in Ecosphere.
September 2024: KLEE researcher Mary Waithira Ngugi begins her four-month study visit to Notre Dame University.
August 2024: Duncan Kimuyu, Amy Wolf, Megan Lulow, Derek Young, Elizabeth Forbes, Georgia Titcomb, Sarah Ortiz, and Truman share a lab lunch at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Long Beach, California. Also at the meeting: Mpala researchers Carmen Watkins, Patrick Milligan, and Elizabeth Pringle. The meeting's keynote speaker spent the majority of his talk highlighting HiIlary Young's KLEE research!
July 2024: Duncan Kimuyu, Ryan Sensenig (pyrogenic soil carbon), Amy Wolf (NutNet), Mary Ngugi Waithira (soil microbes), and Truman Young share a field season at the KLEE plots at Mpala Research Centre, accompanied by graduate students Carmen Ebel Watkins (Oregon) and Sara Ortiz (Texas).
July 2024: Great news! Mary Waithira Ngugi, who is doing her doctoral work on soil microbial ecology in KLEE, has received a prestigious WWF Russell Train Fellowship! Congratulations, Mary!
April 2024: Todd Palmer and Corinna Riginos are interviewed by Scientific American about the article they published with Douglas Kamaru and others (including Jake Goheen) on the cascading effects of big-headed ants in a Laikipia savanna, published in Science.
March 2024: Truman visits Downe House (thanks, Andi!), and fulfills a lifelong goal, exploring the Sand Walk.
February 2024: Mau Stanton interviews Truman for the UC Davis Emeriti Association. Thanks, Mau!
January 2024: More exciting news! Lab member and early KLEE researcher Michelle Gadd is elected to the 2024 Class of Explorers 50 (Explorer's Club). Also, Mpala collaborator Toby Kiers. Congratulations, Michelle and Toby!
September 2023: Truman re-connects with geographer Hanspeter Liniger in Gstaad, Switzerland, 40 years after they both worked on Mount Kenya.
July-August 2023: Truman travels to Kenya for management of the KLEE project, including REU students from Goshen College and Africa, and met with co-PIs Duncan Kimuyu and Ryan Sensenig and graduate students Mary Waithira Ngugi and Robert Ang'ila.
May 2023: Mary Ngugi Waithira passes her MSc examination at the University of Nairobi, based on dissertation work on KLEE controlled burns.
April 2023: Truman's note, "High mountain wanderings" is published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
March 2023: On Truman's first(!) trip to Asia, he visited the ForestGeo project at Danum Valley in Borneo, hosted by Alex Karolus. This project is part of the network of 50-ha plots that started with the iconic plot in Panama (where Truman worked in the 1980s). The Forest GEO project recently added a plot at Mpala, Kenya, to which KLEE co-PI Duncan Kimuyu is a contributor.
February 2023: Truman visits colleagues and gives a talk at the The Africa Center for Sustainable Ecosystems and Societies under Global Change at Colorado State University: "Economic Justifications for Conservation: A Useful Tool but a Foolish Foundation?", and attends the Front Range Student Ecology Symposium (FRSES), as a presentation judge.
January 2023: Harry Wells starts a postdoc at Princeton University, working with Rob Pringle and Dave Wilcove to explore patterns and ecological impacts of rewilding and the use of restoration as a tool to understand ecosystem processes.
December 2022: Exciting News! Felicia Keesing, one of the first researchers to work in KLEE, and author/co-author of 20 KLEE publications, has been awarded the 2022 International Cosmos Prize! Previously awardees include E.O. Wilson, Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, David Attenborough, Stuart Pimm, Peter Raven, and Jane Goodall. Congratulations, Felicia!
August-September 2022: Truman makes an extended research trip visit the Kenya Long-term Exclosure Experiment (KLEE).
August 2022: Chhaya Werner is interviewed by Oregon Public Radio about ecosystem renewal after the removal of the Elwah River dams.
August 2022: Jen Balachowski takes a position as Sustainability Science and Communications Lead for the start-up NCX.
July 2022: Alex Palmerlee is awarded a Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG), from NRCS, for "Developing targeted land management practices for effective and cost-efficient oak restoration" (w/ collaborators Kurt Vaughn, Valerie Eviner, and Truman Young).
June 2022: Truman rafts the San Juan River with the UC Davis EcoGeo course, having in previous years joined them on the Grand Canyon (twice) and the Yampa-Green.
May 2022: Isabel Pérez Postigo (from Almut Arneth's lab at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) presents the poster, "Herbivore impact on savanna vegetation in Kenya", at the 2022 Living Planet Symposium (European Space Agency) in Bonn, Germany, based on satellite telemetry of the KLEE and UHURU plots.
March 2022: Duncan Kimuyu, Ryan Sensenig, and an army of helpers (including five NSF-supported REU undergraduates) completed 36 controlled burns in KLEE, the third set since 2013.
February 2022: The mega-authored paper led by Marta Sperandii, "LOTVS: a global collection of permanent vegetation plots" (including the KLEE data set) appears in the Journal of Vegetation Science.
January 2022: Harry Wells joins the KLEE research group as a post-doc.
December 2021: Chhaya Werner accepts an Assistant Professor position at Southern Oregon University. Congratulations, Chhaya!
November 2021: Mary Waithira Ngugi (University of Nairobi) begins her MSc research on post-fire survival and growth in acacias, supported by KLEE.
August-September 2021: After a long COVID-induced delay, Truman finally gets back to visit the KLEE project in Kenya (and visits Elise Buisson in Avignon).
Aug 2021: Russ Huddleston takes a position as an Ecologist (Wetlands Section) at US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
July 2021: "Large herbivore loss has complex effects on mosquito ecology and vector‐borne disease risk" by David Tchouassi, Baldwin Torto, Rosemary Sang, Corinna Riginos, and Vanessa Ezenwa, a fascinating paper on mosquitoes in KLEE, appears in Transboundary and Emerging Diseases.
June 2021: Another Harry Wells KLEE (and UHURU) paper, "Experimental evidence that effects of megaherbivores on mesoherbivore space use are influenced by species’ traits" is accepted for publication in Journal of Animal Ecology.
March 2021: Eric LaMalfa's KLEE paper (w/ Kari and Corinna), "Browsing wildlife and heavy grazing indirectly facilitate sapling recruitment in an East African savanna" is accepted for publication in Ecological Applications.
January 2021: Laura Morales accepts a post-doc at World Agroforestry-ICRAF (formerly the International Center for Research in Agro-forestry) in Lima Peru, emphasizing ecological resiliency.
November 2020: Kelly Gravuer publishes "Invader-resident relatedness and soil management history shape patterns of invasion of compost microbial populations into agricultural soils" in Applied Soil Ecology.
September 2020: Another review led by Elise Buisson, "A research agenda for the restoration of tropical and subtropical grasslands and savannas", is also accepted for publication in Restoration Ecology. This is the third in a series of review articles from this group, all accepted in Restoration Ecology in the the last few months.
August 2020: A review led by Elise Buisson, "Key issues in north-western Mediterranean grassland restoration", is accepted for publication in Restoration Ecology.
July 2020: Truman (barely) survives his tenure as Chair of the Graduate Group in Ecology.
June 2020: Starry Sprenkle accepts a position as Restoration Science Director at Conservation International.
May 2020: The group paper, "Myth-busting tropical grassy biome restoration" appears online in Restoration Ecology.
April 2020: Chhaya's other great April achievement: Varisha Lupin Werner Latson.
April 2020: Amid the COVID-19 muddle, our French colleagues return to France, nearly on schedule.
February 2020: Several lab alums converge on the annual meeting of the Society for Range Management in Denver: Kari Veblen, Lauren Porensky, Corinna Riginos, Steve Fick, and Truman. Lauren was a Plenary Speaker!
January 2020: Great news! NSF has funded the next five years of KLEE, as the first half of our decadal proposal: “LTREB: Stability and resilience in the face of multiple interacting press and pulse disturbances of a changing world (Kenya Long-term Exclosure Experiment: KLEE)”. Core collaborators/PIs are Duncan Kimuyu, Wilfred Odadi, Kari Veblen, Lauren Hallett, Amy Wolf, and Ryan Langendorf.
January 2020: With support from the France-Berkeley Fund, Avignon Université, and UC Davis, Truman and Val Eviner begin hosting a visit from restoration ecologists Elise Buisson, Manon Hess, Aure Durbecq, Renaud Jaunatre, and Julie Braschi of Avignon Université (and allied universities).
September 2019: At the International Meeting of of the Society for Ecological Restoration in Cape Town, South Africa, Truman co-leads a workshop on Priority Effects in Restoration, with Cara Nelson and Elise Buisson.
September 2019: Truman's review of Rewilding (Eds. Nathalie Pettorelli, Sarah M. Durant, and Johan T. Du Toit. Cambridge University Press) appears in the Quarterly Review of Biology.
August 2019: At the Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Louisville, Kentucky, Truman meets up with Collaborators Amy Wolf, Katie Stuble, and Lauren Hallett.
August 2019: Kevin Welch takes a position as an environmental scientist for the Climate and Energy Program at CAL FIRE.
July 2019: After a delay of several years, our article on Ecological Restoration came out in Encyclopaedia Britannica(!).
June 2019: Truman floats the Yampa-Green with a group of ecologists, hydrologists and geologists (and a resource economist) from UC Davis, (and gets tossed).
May 2019: Kurt Vaughn and Clare Ray welcome Odin into the world!
April 2019: Truman visits Chhaya Werner and Jon Chase at iDiv in Leipzig, Germany.
April 2019: Lauren Porensky receives one of four 2019 Early Career Research Scientist Awards from ARS (Agricultural Research Service).
February 2019: Grace Charles takes a position as a Research Scientist with the Surgo Foundation in Washington, D.C.
January 2019: Bode Kelly Veblen joins his sister Marea in Logan, Utah.
January 2019: Wilfred Odadi is awarded a two-year FLAIR fellowship from the Royal Society (London).
December 2018: All my chicks have fledged, and soar high above and far afield.
November 2018: Jen Balachowski accepts a position at the US African Development Foundation (as part of her Presidential Management Fellowship).
November 2018: Chhaya Werner is awarded her doctorate. Congratulations, Chhaya!
October 2018: Kelly Gravuer gets married (to Jeff Le), and accepts a position as an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow with the EPA in Washington, D.C.
August 2018: Ghost-doc Amy Wolf accepts a tenure-track position at the University of Texas, Austin. Congratulations, Amy!
July 2018: Laura Morales’ paper, “Differential seedling regeneration patterns across forest-grassland ecotones in two tropical treeline species (Polylepis spp.)” comes out in Austral Ecology.
June 2018: Truman takes over as Chair of the UC Davis Graduate Group in Ecology. What was he thinking?
April 2018: Katie Stuble’s lab paper on year and site effects in California restoration (“Every restoration is unique”, which appeared in the Journal of Ecology last July, is named a “Highly Commended Paper” (short-listed for the Southwood Prize)
March 2018: Ecological Applications publishes a paper by Corinna Riginos et al.: “Herbivory and drought generate short-term stochasticity and long-term stability in a savanna understory community”, summarizing stability and resilience patterns from 20 years of KLEE data.
February 2018: Duncan Kimuyu and Eric LaMalfa (w/ Truman and Chhaya and an army of assistants) carry out 36 controlled burns in KLEE.
January 2018: Duncan Kimuyu is awarded a prestigious Smithsonian Postdoctoral Fellowship. Congratulations, Duncan!
January 2018: The KLEE project is awarded its third NSF REU grant, the second senior-authored by UCSB grad student Elizabeth Forbes. UC Davis undergraduate Grace Lewin will be joining her this summer in Kenya.
December 2017: Gilfred Powys, naturalist extraordinaire and mentor to many, was killed by an elephant on his ranch in Laikipia, Kenya.
December 2017: The only UC Davis awardees for this year’s prestigious Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) Program (and 2 of the 3 of ecology applicants nationally) are from the Young Lab: Grace Charles and Jen Balachowski. PMFs are fast-tracked for career jobs in the federal government. Congratulations Jen and Grace!
December 2017: Lab paper on the restoration implications of priority (wrapped around a summary of PRYER results) is published Restoration Ecology (after being online for 18 months!).
November 2017: Derek Young is awarded his doctorate in Ecology, and starts his postdoc with Andrew Latimer. Congratulations, Derek!
October 2017: Lauren Porensky receives the Outstanding Young Range Professional Award of the Society for Range Management. Congratulations, Lauren!
August/September 2017: Annual meeting of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) in Brazil. Truman presented: “Context-dependence of priority effects in the restoration of California grasslands”.
August 2017: Laura Morales takes a position as an Instructor for the School for Field Studies, Peru.
August 2017: Jen Balachowski’s paper, “Implications of plant functional traits and drought survival strategies for ecological restoration” appears online in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
August 2017: Kristina Wolf’s paper on the cascading effects of grassland restoration on rodents, snakes, and raptors appears online in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
August 2017: Ten current and recent lab members (and a mystery man) converge on Portland, Oregon for the Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America. Sitting: Kari Veblen, Lauren Porensky, Truman, Elizabeth Forbes. Standing: Kevin Welch, Chhaya Werner, Jen Balachowski, Grace Charles, Katie Stuble, Amy Wolf, Corinna Riginos, Han Olff.
July 2017: Kelly Gravuer’s paper, “Nutrient and rainfall additions shift phylogenetically estimated traits of soil microbial communities” is published in Frontiers in Microbiology.
June 2017: The KLEE project (the Kenya Longterm Exclosure Experiment) exceeds 100 publications (70 from the exclosures themselves), making it the most productive field experiment ever carried on on the continent of Africa.
June 2017: Kristina Wolf shepherds a lab review on the role on restoration in responding to climate change, published in Grasslands.
June 2017: Kari Veblen gets tenure at Utah State University. Congratulations. Kari!
May 2017: Lab gets two papers published in Ecology, one first-authored by Ryan Sensenig on fire and ants in KLEE (Kenya) and one first-authored by Katie Stuble on priority effects, year effects, and site effects in PRYER (California).
May 2017: Duncan Kimuyu’s paper the effects of cattle, rainfall and elephants on wildlife habitat use appears in .
April 2017: Wilfred Odadi’s paper on post-fire competition between wildlife and cattle is chosen as an Editor’s Choice in the Journal of Ecology. Well done, Wilfred!
March 2017: Kristina Wolf takes a position as a restoration scientist at H.T. Harvey.
March 2017: Laura Morales is awarded her doctorate in Ecology. Congratulations, Laura!
January to August 2017: There is an invasion of hundreds of armed herders and over 100,000 cattle into Laikipia, Kenya.
January 2017: Paper on the effects of wildlife and cattle on savanna primary productivity, senior-authored by Grace Charles and Lauren Porensky, is published in Ecological Applications.
December 2016: Starry Sprenkle’s paper on agroforestry/restoration in Haiti is published in Ecological Restoration, and gets the cover photo!
December 2016: Duncan Kimuyu is awarded his Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi. Congratulations, Duncan!
October 2016: Laura Morales is co-author on a Polylepis genetics paper published in Austral Ecology.
April-September 2016: the extended lab celebrates two engagements, two marriages, two babies, and two more on the way!
September 2016: “Are cattle surrogate wildlife?”, summarizing 15 years of KLEE vegetation data, is published in Ecological Applications, and gets the cover photo!
August 2016: Kelly Gravuer is awarded her Ph.D. degree. Congratulations, Kelly!
August 2016: Kristina Wolf’s paper the relationship between livestock production and recreational use of public lands is accepted for publication in Rangeland Ecology and Management.
July 2016: Jennifer Balachowski’s paper on the physiological correlates of summer dormancy in grasses is published in Annals of Botany.
July 2016: Steve Fick’s paper on restoration on the Colorado Plateau is published in Ecosphere.
July 2016: Jen Balachowski and Kristina Wolf are awarded Shapiro Family Awards for the best doctoral dissertations at UC Davis in Plant Sciences and Agroecology, respectively. Well done, Kristina and Jen!
June 2015: Kristina Wolf’s paper exploring the use of flushing annuals as a restoration technique is published in Ecosphere.
May 2016: Steve Fick and Kristina Wolf earn their Ph.D.’s in Ecology. Congratulations, Kristina and Steve!
March 2016: Chhaya Werner is awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Way to go, Chhaya!
March 2016: Emily Zefferman accepts a Conservation Ecologist position with the Monterrey Resource Conservation District (RCD). Congratulations, Emily!
March 2016: Steve Fick accepts a Research Associate position with the Stockholm Environmental Institute, Sweden. Congratulations, Steve!
March 2016: Truman co-leads an 18-day graduate field course down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, and survives.
January 2016: Mila Dunbar-Irwin’s paper comparing yellow pine forests in (burned) Baja and (fire-suppressed) California comes out in Forest Ecology and Management.
December 2015: Katie Stuble wraps up her post-doc in the Young lab to start an ISEECI post-doc, followed by a full-time position with the Holden Arboretum in Ohio.
December 2015: Jen Balachowski earns her Ph.D. in Ecology. Congratulations, Jen!
June 2015: Emily Zefferman is awarded a Shapiro Award for the best dissertation in Ecology at UC Davis. Congratulations, Emily!
June 2015: Lab paper on fire revealing cryptic plant diversity, first-authored by Derek Young, is published in Ecosphere.
Spring 2015: The Ecological Society of America announces their 2015-19 cohort of (nine) Early Career Fellows. One is lab alumna Corinna Riginos. Congratulations, Corinna! Three others are past or current KLEE researchers at Mpala (Hillary Young, Rob Pringle, and Brian Allan).
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