Half-Baked Seminar: Nicole Hemming-Schroeder
Title: Mapping tree mortality in the Sierra Nevada
Description: For this talk, I'll be discussing a project on mapping tree mortality in the Sierra Nevada during and after the 2012-2015 California drought. We used lidar data from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) to map and classify trees as dead or alive in the Soaproot Saddle and Teakettle sites in the Southern Sierra Nevada for the years 2013, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021. We estimate that about 30% of trees in the Sierra Nevada died after the last drought as quantified for 2017 and that 5% of the initial amount of trees continued to die each year through 2021.