CA LCC welcomes three new team members

The California Landscape Conservation Cooperative continues to enhance its ability to support science development and delivery with the addition of three new team members to the staff.

Karen Thorne is our newest member of the CA LCC. Thorne, a research ecologist with the USGS Western Ecological Research Center, will work closely with Rebecca Fris, CA LCC science coordinator, to provide technical support and interpret and translate science for use by natural resource managers. Thorne recently received her PhD in geography with an emphasis in global change from UC Davis. Her current research includes sea-level rise ecological response modeling and assessing impacts to wildlife and plant communities. Thorne can be reached at kthorne@usgs.gov.

Deanne DiPietro and Zhahai Stewart join the CA LCC team to support the LCC with data management and sharing. DiPietro and Stewart were instrumental in the development of the California Climate Commons, a knowledge base website for discovering climate change tools, data, maps, and other information. DiPietro is the project leader for the Commons and a long-time informatics specialist. Stewart is a web developer and the Commons lead architect. DiPietro and Stewart will continue work on development of the Climate Commons with PRBO Conservation Science, UC Davis Information Center for the Environment, and other partners within the LCC. In addition, they will assist CA LCC with data management and synthesis including delivery of relevant information to resource managers. PRBO Conservation Science is partnering with us by providing office space for Deanne and Zhahai in Petaluma. DiPietro can be reached at ddipietro@prbo.org, and Stewart can be reached at zstewart@prbo.org.