Faculty Spotlights - Spring 2020
Read more stories in the Spring 2020 Newsletter
Welcome Yamina Pressler, Ph.D.
Yamina Pressler, full time lecturer, joined the Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences Department in fall 2019. As a graduate of Cal Poly, she was happy to return to her alma mater to teach classes such as Natural Resource Ecology and Habitat Management, Introductory Soil Science, and Soil Morphology. She earned her doctorate in ecology from Colorado State University and was a postdoctoral research associate at Texas A&M in the Soil and Crop Sciences Department. There, she continued to conduct research on soil food webs and soil organic matter with a focus on west Texas rangelands. She also mentored graduate and undergraduate students.
Pressler studies how environmental disturbances -- primarily fire -- affect soil organisms, soil food webs, and soil organic matter. She is interested in what she considers the “perplexing biodiversity of soils.” Though she has spent years studying soil organisms, she is still fascinated by the vast biodiversity below ground. Pressler has studied how soil food webs respond to fire and other disturbances in a wide variety of contexts, including the arctic, semi-arid rangelands and plains. Another research interest of hers is how soil organisms control soil organic matter formation and the role that trophic interactions have in forming stabilizing soil organic matter in various contexts, including in fire management and agricultural systems.
While studying environmental management and protection at Cal Poly, she realized her interest in soils after taking Chip Appel’s Introduction to Soils class. Though she loved the class, Pressler said it took a few years before she decided to pursue soil science because she simply didn’t see herself as a scientist. But the more she learned about soil, the more she discovered her passion for studying it. Despite her deep interest in the subject, she had never really considered graduate school until one of her professors suggested it. Ultimately, she wanted to go to graduate school because she wasn’t done learning about soil — and she feels that way even today.
As a student at Cal Poly, she was on the Soil Judging Team, going on field trips that she says created some of her best memories from her time at school. “Those kinds of experiences are so memorable that I want to create them for students.” Now in her Natural Resource Ecology and Habitat Management class, she leads students on a weekend camping trip to Death Valley National Park. On the trip, students observe and apply ecological concepts in one of the most unique landscapes in California. “The Death Valley field trip is designed to be very experiential. It’s really just about being there and being able to see many of the ecological phenomena that we talk about in class.”
Pressler is involved in a number of projects, including a documentary film called “Will Run For Soil,” which will follow her and two other soil scientists as they run 150 miles through the desert in order to “bring awareness to the wonder, beauty and importance of soils and soil biodiversity.” She began painting last year, and her watercolors of miniature soil profiles were displayed at the art show at the Soil Science Society of America meeting last year.
She is also passionate about writing, specifically writing as a practice crucial to the learning process. All her hobbies — running, painting and writing — have more in common than they seem. “As soon as you see them as about the process and the journey of doing them, it changes your perspective.” She applies this philosophy to the classroom as well, where she encourages students to find value in the process of learning through low-stakes writing assignments that “facilitate a space for students to be able to practice without having to worry so much about the grade.”
Beyond classroom education, Pressler believes it is important to cultivate an “appreciation for science and the natural world and the tools you need to be a lifelong learner,” whether it is “being able to see an ecological system through a new lens, being able to go on a hike and notice the soil in a way that you never have before, or being curious about the world around you, so that you can continue to learn for the rest of your life.”
Pressler says, “My whole mission is to get more people thinking about soil. More soil scientists in the world would be great, but I recognize that not everybody is going to become a soil scientist. But I hope that the work I do, both at Cal Poly and out in public spaces, gets people to think about soil just for one second longer, or take a second look, or give it a second thought. To conserve this important natural resource, we first have to have the eyes to be able to see it. It wasn’t until I took a soils class that I had the eyes to be able to see soils for how important they really are, and I’m trying to give people those eyes”.
Yiwen Chiu, Ph.D.
Studying Abroad with the Taiwan Environmental Management and Sustainability Program
The NRES Department launched the Taiwan Environmental Management and Sustainability program in 2018, spearheaded by Associate Professor Yiwen Chiu. Two cohorts of students have participated over the past couple of summers.
The six-week program begins with two weeks in Taipei, an international city experience that gives students the chance to fully immerse themselves in typical Asian culture and helps them adjust more easily. Next, students visit the relatively rural mountainous area of the island. Chiu says that the change in landscape allows students to “compare how we actually change our living styles and understand the need for different infrastructure in very different environments.”
Taiwan’s species richness per area is more than 30 times higher than the global average, combining rich natural ecosystems with rapid economic and population growth on a small area of land. Chiu believes it is an ideal living classroom to learn about environmental management because it “represents contemporary environmental challenges facing the rest of the world within a tiny island.”
In addition to day trips to historical sites and visiting national parks, Chiu says that students really enjoy the nighttime activities, when they get to discover an ecosystem in the dark through sound and observe the difference in animal activity at different parts of the day. Students also get to try tree climbing using only roping techniques that allow forestry scientists to collect pollen and seeds from a tree canopy. “I’m really glad that the Taiwan program provides the kind of opportunity that allows students to explore, and most importantly, to step out of their comfort zone and try something new and adventurous,” Chiu says.
During the program, students are joined by a group of bilingual Taiwanese students who share their local perspectives on everything from environmental management to the social and cultural side of things in classes as well as on weekend trips. Chiu says that this also helps students not feel pressured to understand and speak the language fluently. “It’s fascinating to see how students can work as a team, as a big family, to enjoy the trip as well as to grow together,” she says.
Chiu sayd the favorite part of the program is that every cohort of students is very different. “It’s always exciting and interesting to see how students transform,” she says, as well as “how they actually help and support each other to overcome social or cultural barriers.”
Welcome Seeta Sistla, Ph.D.
Seeta Sistla, Assistant Professor, joined the Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences (NRES) Department in fall 2019, bringing a diverse knowledge of soil and ecosystem ecology. Sistla studied biology with a minor in anthropology and sociology as an undergraduate at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where she also earned an M.A. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Brown University, and a doctorate in ecology from the UC Santa Barbara. Currently, Sistla’s main area of study focuses on the understanding of plant-soil feedback mechanisms at an ecosystem level and how these systems change in response to global climate change drivers. Currently Sistla is researching the effects that global warming poses on changing levels of nutrient availability and rates of carbon sequestration in tundra soils, as well as the effects to soil processes associated with unprecedented fires in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in Alaska. She hopes that studying the drastic changes in these plant-soil feedback systems will serve as “a canary in a coal mine” and offer an essential understanding of how other ecosystems around the world will also be affected by rising global temperatures. Sistla also works in lower latitude ecosystems studying the stimulation of microbial activity in agricultural soils with compost additions. She looks forward to further developing the soil ecology program at Cal Poly by implementing land use and global change programs, as well as by working with local industries to develop student-volunteer projects.
Welcome Stewart Wilson, Ph.D.
The Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences Department (NRES) welcomed Stewart Wilson, Assistant Professor, at the start of the winter quarter in January 2020. Wilson teaches three courses in the Soil Science Department: SS 120: Introductory Soil Science, SS 321: Soil Morphology, and SS 431: Digital Soil Mapping. Before teaching at Cal Poly, he was working for an ag-tech startup in the Bay Area.
Wilson earned an associate degree from College of the Redwoods in Eureka, California, before transferring to Humboldt State University, where he earned a B.S. in wildland soil science. He then furthered his education at UC Davis, earning two master’s degrees: an M.S. in soils and biogeochemistry and an M.A. geography (GIS). Wilson also earned his doctorate in soils and biogeochemistry from UC Davis.
Wilson is interested in how soils form and in the way they form through the soil-forming factors (i.e., climate, topography, parent material, relief, time). Furthermore, he is interested in predicting soil properties in a landscape based on these factors. His research involves the predictive mapping and modeling of soils. Wilson uses existing databases of soils to make inferences about soil properties, create soil maps, and create machine learning maps of soil properties. Additionally, he does fundamental research on how soils form, mineralogy, and how the soil-forming factors interact. Another area of his research includes phosphorus biogeochemistry, investigating how phosphorus cycles through the terrestrial ecosystem. Wilson also does work in vineyard soils and sustainable vineyard management.
In addition to teaching, Wilson enjoys spending time with his family, hiking, surfing, snowboarding, mountain biking and gardening. The NRES Department looks forward to having him on the faculty and seeing the impacts of his work.
Read more stories in the Spring 2020 Newsletter
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