US Forest Service

US Forest Service I f it hasn’t been made clear yet, each student apart of the STEM research opportunity program has had an extremely unique experience with their particular area of study. This was especially the case for Iris Garcia, Alondra Garcia, Hasha Palerm and Cole Barron, who each gave powerful testimonies describing their passion for conservation and grateful attitude for their experience.

For two of the students apart of the U.S. Forest Service group, they began the internship with a trip to Placerville, CA where they attended the Western Forest Genetics Association annual seminar. During the seminar, Alondra and Iris Garcia gained an understanding of forest conservation and seed banks. According to their website, “the Western Forest Genetics Association (WFGA) comprises professionals, researchers, and students involved in forest genetics issues in the western US and Canada.” As a college student, attending a conference full of professionals may be intimidating but Iris Garcia revealed that she felt extremely welcomed and supported by everyone at the conference. So much so, many of her colleagues attending the conference encouraged her to join the forest conservation community. During the following weeks, the rest of the group continued their internship hiking and scouting areas for Sugar Pine trees. White pine blister, a pathogen affecting many of the pine trees in our forests, causes serious disease and possible death in trees. Moreover, they spent several hours over the summer using ArcGIS, a geographic information system used to compile data and map geographic systems. Iris Garcia further explained, “Some sugar pines have been found to be naturally resistant to this pathogen, so the focus was to harvest seeds from Sugar pines in order to find the genetic component that makes them resistant and figure out if they can manipulate that genome in other species, or perhaps cross hybridize them to grow naturally resistant trees” During the entirety of their internship, they each supported their supervisor Arnaldo Ferreira in his collection of samples while simultaneously grasping the urgency of forest conservation.

Iris Garcia, who now studies environmental horticulture and urban forestry at the University of California, Davis, expressed her immense gratitude towards Chaffey’s STEM program, “This experience definitely helped me focus my own interests and introduced me to future opportunities as a student at UC Davis.” she continued, “My biggest takeaway has been the fact that there are research opportunities and careers in almost any biological subject imaginable.” Kenya Staley @kenyastaley

Photo by Iris Garcia Yosemite

Photo by Iris Garcia Mary Freeman in front of Vernal Falls in Yosemite National Park