Sara Baguskas has been awarded a USDA Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, which will fund her for two years to study the effects of coastal fog on water use in agriculture. She plans to integrate the effect of coastal fog on the physical environment and plant water use to improve estimates of evapotranspiration from farms and to inform farmer water use decisions during the summer months. She will be mentored by Michael Loik, a plant ecophysiologist at UC Santa Cruz.
Sara finished her dissertation in September 2014 (advisor: Christopher Still, co-advisor: Jennifer King). Her dissertation focused on the combined effects of coastal fog and seasonal drought on the water relations and mortality risk of Bishop pines on Santa Cruz Island. Sara found that trees are most susceptible to drought-induced mortality in less foggy areas of the stand. Based on her field observations, she also found that fog events, especially those that occur late in the summer, can reverse dehydration in pines that otherwise occurs as antecedent soil moisture declines. Moreover, the effects of fog on ameliorating water stress is stronger in sapling than adult trees. These findings have important implications for modeling population structure in a warmer and perhaps less foggy the future. Finally, through a controlled greenhouse study, Sara provides convincing evidence that foliar absorption of fog water occurs in Bishop pines, which adds a novel species to the list of plants for which this mechanisms has been tested. Sara used a variety of techniques to address her questions, including aerial photo interpretation, remote sensing, field-based plant ecophysiology, and conducted a controlled greenhouse experiment.
Over the past year, Sara has been working as a postdoc with Max Moritz (UC-Berkeley) to understand how potential conversion from a tree- to shrub-dominated watershed in the southern Sierra Nevada may impact streamflow under climate change scenarios. Sara led field trips to sites in the southern Sierra to quantify how water availability and use differed between dominant tree and shrub species. These plant ecophysiological measurements were used by a fellow postdoc on the project, Ryan Bart (Ph.D. SDSU Joint Degree Program in Geography), to parameterize an ecohydrologic model, RHESSys (developed by Naomi Tague in the Bren School) to generate improved estimates of streamflow. This project is part of a larger effort to understand controls on the water and carbon budget in the Southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory (SSCZO).
Sara plans to continue work on Santa Cruz Island projects that are related to the effects of drought on population dynamics of Bishop pines. She is also working on a project with a new faculty member in EEMB, Ryoko Oono, on foliar fungal endophyte diversity in the pines and understory chaparral species. So, the island and friends will continue to bring her back to town!
She is sad to leave, but also excited about improving her surfing skills up the coast!
Editor’s note: Many thanks to Dr. Baguskas for contributing this material. We’ll miss her!
