SMC Researchers Tackle Fire Recovery Research With Lichens

On a rare chilly summer morning, Vanessa Carsey '23 and Professor Jessica Coyle collect lichen off local oak trees. The air is a bit smoky and the air quality in Contra Costa has been fluctuating with fire season already in full swing. Lichen, a complex life-form that is a symbiotic partnership of fungus and an alga, may not look like much, but they play a key role in fire recovery research.

The team's summer research is focused on the Quail Ridge Trail in Napa Valley, where fire devastated the area in 2020. Their goal: to collect and analyze lichen DNA to determine how long the Quail Ridge ecosystem will take to recover, and what to expect if fire returns to the area. Today, Carsi is in the lab, fine-tuning a new method of collecting quantifiable lichen DNA samples so they can be analyzed. This research is a continuation of Professor Coyle's research, which started in 2021.

We sat down with student researcher Vanessa Carsey '23 to learn more about the correlation of lichens and fire recovery.

You're a student researcher working on a research project: Ecology of Northern California Lichens. What are lichens, and what do they have to do with researching fire recovery in the Napa Valley area?

Lichens are a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an algae. They basically form when those two are combined. Essentially, what we're trying to focus on is fire recovery. And the fire specifically that we're focusing on is in Quail Ridge Trail in 2020. We are checking to see the recovery of the ecosystem in that area, and using lichens to determine how soon or late things can start growing there. Specifically lichens because they do need a shrub or something to attach to. So, if there are available shrubs there, how long will it take for lichens to fully come back and start to regrow?

Why is performing research on lichens in fire-prone areas important? 

Just like how people have to kind of restore their own lives after a fire, ecosystems have to as well. With climate change and global warming, they greatly affect restoration in different ecosystems. We're researching: How long does climate change have an effect? Do these things have an effect after a fire for these restorations? How long will it take to come back? And if another fire were to devastate this area again, and these plants, what effect would that have on things coming back and being able to regrow in this area?

I think this could also be applied to other fires and be used as a way to predict when things can start to regrow as well.

What drew you to be a researcher on Ecology of Northern California Lichens?

Well, I'm a biology major, so I don't really have my hands in a lot of environmental or ecological things. So, I thought this would be a kind of a good branch for me to learn research and get different experience while also staying in the area of biology as a whole. I'm interested in climate change and doing more research on air pollution and restoration. And so I believe this fit really well.

This lichens research has been ongoing since 2021, with various students contributing. What have you and the team learned so far from the research gathered?

Well, so far they've just collected the samples. Right now is where they need someone, like myself, to come in and create a method to get these lichen off of filters, without damaging them, in order to collect quantifiable DNA. So far right now, I would say that we mostly have a method. We're still kind of trying it out, but hopefully this last trial goes well, and we'll be able to apply that to the actual samples.

What are the most challenging aspects of the research that you're doing so far?

I would say the most difficult part would be trying to find a method to begin with and trial and error. There's not a lot of research on this specific topic. So, that research fell on me to look at other methods from past research, see what works best, what I could apply and tweak.

And what is your favorite part of this research you're performing?

I would say the same. The trial and error, trying to figure out something new, something different, and just trying to see what works best and seeing if this could be applied to other things, or this method could be applied to different scenarios. 

Carsey and Coyle will work all through the summer in the School of Science's Summer Research Program, a unique program that pairs science majors with professors to perform 10 weeks of ground-breaking real-world problem-solving research.

Learn more about the Summer Research Program