{"id":17,"date":"2014-02-24T16:15:56","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T16:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/southwest\/?page_id=17"},"modified":"2025-09-04T21:29:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T21:29:04","slug":"information-for-students","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/southwest\/information-for-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Information for Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

Participation in chapter activities at ESA meetings
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Our chapter invites full involvement in our business meetings (your vote counts!), and other organized events during the meeting. We also offer travel awards each year to assist in attending ESA! This is a great opportunity to meet leading researchers in the Southwest.<\/p>\n

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Congratulations<\/span> to our ESA 2025 Annual Meeting Travel Award <\/span>Recipients<\/span>!<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

The ESA Southwest Chapter had the pleasure to offer travel awards to two students to attend the 2025 ESA Annual meeting in Baltimore, MD during our Business Mixer! Congratulations: Rebecca Senft (University of Utah), Pari Sapkota (University of Texas, El Paso) and Cassandra Fernandez (Ventura County Community College)!\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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ESA 2024 Annual Meeting Travel Award Recipients:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Congratulations: Dylan Stover (University of Texas at El Paso) and Jordan Solomon!<\/em><\/p>\n

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Congratulations to our Past Awardees!<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

2023 Awardees<\/strong><\/p>\n

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2022 Awardees<\/strong><\/p>\n

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2019 Courtney Currier <\/strong><\/p>\n

I am a Ph.D. student with Dr. Osvaldo Sala at Arizona State University. I am broadly interested in long-term patterns in plant-ecosystem interactions with precipitation extremes and other global change drivers. These interactions include phenology patterns and biogeochemical cycling. My research focuses on phenological controls of productivity and plant-soil nutrient cycling as a result of long-term extremes in precipitation in drylands. At the 2018 ESA Annual Meeting, I presented results of 4 years of rainfall manipulation (+80% precipitation addition, ambient, -80% rainfall interception) at the Jornada Basin LTER on plant phenology and addresses multiple hypotheses. Complementary to long-term NPP data within the same experimental plots, my results lend compelling insight on differential responses of plant functional group to treatments where drought had an overall stronger effect on plant phenology than increased precipitation, and shrubs and grasses respond differently to treatment type.<\/p>\n

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2019 Katie Young<\/strong><\/p>\n

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2018 Christina Lupoli:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Christina Lupoli\u2019s award winning abstract; \u201cDoes hydropower affect food web connectivity in an arid large-river system?\u201d<\/p>\n

Christina\u2019s main interests lie in the field of community ecology at the terrestrial-aquatic interface. In particular, she hope to understand how members of these communities interact with one another and the strength of these interactions. Right now, she is interested in studying how inter-annual changes in aquatic insect emergences in the Colorado River affect the composition of their surrounding terrestrial communities. This question is based on the USGS\u2019s findings that differences in river flow-management, such as spring floods, can strong alter aquatic emergency production which, in turn, affects rainbow trout populations.\u00a0For further information or to contact Christina, see here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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2018 Gordon Smith:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Gordon Smith\u2019s award winning abstract; \u201cSex differences in pollinator behavior: patterns across species and consequences for plants.\u201d<\/p>\n

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2017 Alessandro (Alex) Filazzola:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Alex Filazzola\u2019s award winning abstract; \u201cThe inclusion of positive interactions in modeling the niche space of desert annuals\u201d<\/p>\n

Alessandro (Alex) Filazzola is a community ecologist and conservation biologist. His current research is in California studying desert systems with a particular focus on plant-plant interactions. His previous research includes studying alpine systems, insect physiology, and using phyto-indicators to estimate deer browsing. Outside of field research, Alex is also a strong supporter of open science, particularly R project, and involved in extending environmentalism to the youth community. For further information or to contact Alex, see his website at:\u00a0<\/span>www.Filazzola.info<\/a><\/p>\n

2017 Brian Smithers:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Brian Smithers\u2019 award winning abstract; \u201cUpslope treeline shifts point to life stage climate envelope differences in Great Basin bristlecone pine forests\u201d<\/p>\n

Brian is\u00a0interested in how tree communities assemble at and above treeline using climate change as a human-timescale proxy for changing environmental conditions. His work focuses on the \u201csky island\u201d Basin and Range Mountains of the North American west such as the White Mountains in California where he uses plot sampling, experimental common gardens, dendrochronology, and population genetics to study the range dynamics of limber pine and Great Basin bristlecone pine, some of which are the oldest individual living organisms on earth.<\/p>\n

2017 Tara Bishop:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tara Bishop\u2019s award winning abstract; \u201cRodents disrupt invasive grass fire cycles\u201d<\/p>\n

2016 Julia Bettinelli:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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2015 \u2013\u00a0Eva Robinson:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Eva Robinson\u2019s winning abstract title; \u201cSoil fungi benefit both plants and biocrusts in arid lands: a test of the fungal loop hypothesis\u201d<\/p>\n

Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA<\/p>\n

2015 \u2013 Anny Chung:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Anny Chung\u2019s winning abstract title: \u201cPlant-soil feedbacks and long-term coexistence dynamics in the field\u201d<\/p>\n

Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA<\/p>\n

2014 \u2013 Kristen DaVanon:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Kristen DaVanon, New Mexico State University, \u201cThe effects of urbanization on state change mediated by predator-prey interactions\u201d<\/p>\n

2014 \u2013\u00a0Heather Kropp:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Heather<\/a><\/p>\n

Heather Kropp, Arizona State University, \u201cThe effect of plant neighbors on root profiles of a common desert shrub, Larrea tridentata<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Participation in chapter activities at ESA meetings Our chapter invites full involvement in our business meetings (your vote counts!), and other organized events during the meeting. We also offer travel awards each year to assist in attending ESA! This is a great opportunity to meet leading researchers in the Southwest. \u00a0 Congratulations to our ESA 2025 Annual Meeting Travel Award…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2484,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-17","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2484"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":727,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17\/revisions\/727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/southwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}