Student Focus - Sarah Johnson
I hail from the true Paul Bunyan State- Minnesota. I grew up in the Mississippi River bottoms and hardwood region south of the Twin Cities. Before moving to Maine I graduated from the University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point with a degree in forest administration & utilization and a minor in business. After getting involved with extra-curricular undergraduate research projects, I knew I wanted to focus on a career in forest biometrics.
At UMaine, I am working with Aaron Weiskittel and Laura Kenefic to compare long-term trends throughout forests of the northern US. I am comparing eight long-term silvicultural studies from Maine to Minnesota, Missouri to West Virginia. These studies have a range of climatic conditions from oceanic to continental. I am trying to find what is most affecting tree growth response: stocking, composition, climatic variables, or different types of silvicultural experiments. I am also interested identifying if the relative response to these different factors is similar across sites.
In order to try and answer these questions, I am working with folks from the USFS Northern Research Station to make a collective database of these studies. This is an effort to catalogue these data in a standardized process and to identify trends from long-term silvicultural studies at a regional scale.
When I am not working in my office or at home, I enjoy trying new recipes and spending time with other SFR students.
