CHICO – Nearly 300 botanists will be attending the 10th Annual California Botanists Symposium at Chico State in January.
The theme for this year’s gathering is The Diversity of Northern California Botany: Challenges and Opportunities.
Linnea Hanson, Northern California Botanists president, said the group began hosting the symposiums as a way to bring botanists working in various sectors of the field together.
“There just wasn’t a forum for academic, public agency and consulting botanists to come together to talk about botanical issues they were working with. Each ‘branch’ has something to offer the other and this forum provides a way for them to learn and network,” said Hanson.
The symposium will be held Jan. 13-14. On Jan. 15 two post-symposium workshops including a field trip to the Butte Creek Canyon Ecological Reserve to tour the fall 2019 prescribed burn areas.
Eric Knapp, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, will give the keynote address. Knapp has conducted long-term studies on the changes to forests in the absence of fire and how organisms, including plants, respond to disturbances such as fire.
“We thought that Eric’s work with fire ecology, especially the effects of fire on vegetation in the Carr and Camp fires was a good topic,” said Hanson.
While the symposium is for botanists the keynote address — “Fire Trends, Causes and Consequences for the Native Plants We Love” — at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 13 in Bell Memorial Union is open and free to the public.
Among the different session topics slated for the symposium are Species Boundaries, Fire in Managed Landscapes, Restoration, Pollinators and Plant Biotic Interactions.
The Species Boundaries session will address the differences in DNA among plants, in this case specifically Lupinus (lupine) that show no outward, or morphological, differences.
“If the DNA is different do we conserve them? Do you worry about the ones that are different? For example, there are lots of sequoia groves that have distinct DNA do we need to preserve every single grove with different DNA? What do we do to maintain diversity over time? We as humans do a great job of wiping things out, now we have to figure out what to keep, what to preserve. Nobody knows the answer. It’s a big debate right now,” said Hanson.
The symposium will also feature a session on new discoveries.
“New plants and species never described by botanists are being found in Northern California. For example, a new shrub was found in the Carr Fire area. This session fills up every year,” said Hanson.
Because there is so much going on in the field today, there just isn’t enough time during the two day symposium to schedule full-length sessions for everything so the event also includes a session of “lightning talks” — five minute presentations by botanists on current projects and other relevant topics.
A “poster” session is also schedule. This allows botanists to create and display posters explaining their work and answer questions.
Hanson points out that the symposium is a great opportunity for botany students to meet professionals in their field to make connections for internships and jobs. The Northern California Botanists provide a limited number of stipends to help cover students’ expenses for attending the symposium.
“We get a lot of students, about 75 usually, which is great because they can see they can have a viable career in their field of study,” said Hanson.