Students - The Mother Tree Project

Amanda Asay

Amanda was born and raised in Prince George. She completed a PhD with Suzanne Simard in November 2019, after completing a Master of Science under her supervision in the fall of 2013. Her scientific interests during her time at UBC’s Faculty of Forestry were focused on kin recognition/ selection in interior Douglas-fir and the role mycorrhizal networks play in that interaction. Amanda is currently working in Nelson with the research section at FLNRORD looking at long term silvicultural systems trials and the effects over time on carbon, timber and other values associated with those forests.

Alexia Constantinou

Alexia was born and raised in Ontario and came to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 2014 where she completed a Bachelor’s degree in the Faculty of Forestry. She is currently a Master’s student at UBC co-supervised by Dr. Suzanne Simard and Dr. Cole Burton in the Wildlife Coexistence Lab. Her focus is the Mice to Moose Wildlife Project in which she is using a combination of wildlife cameras and live small mammal trapping to evaluate the effect of logging treatments on terrestrial mammal diversity and ranges at three of the Mother Tree locations (Jaffray, Alex Fraser, and John Prince). Alexia has also been engaging with First Nations at some of her field sites, and is excited to continue developing those relationships. When Alexia is not processing camera trap photos, coding in R or in the field, you can find her still in her hiking boots, on skis or with a paddle in hand.

Allen Laroque

Allen was born and raised in Toronto. He is a PhD candidate with Suzanne Simard studying the mycorrhizal connections of the ‘salmon forest’ in Heiltsuk traditional territory near Bella Bella, BC. Here the death of spawning salmon represents a large nutrient pulse that subsidizes the terrestrial ecosystem with marine-derived nutrients. These nutrients are taken up and incorporated by the mycorrhizal fungi of trees and plants, and then may be transferred a considerable distance from the stream through mycorrhiza networks, providing a nutrient subsidy at a distance into the surrounding forest away from salmon-bearing streams and rivers. The methodologies he is employing include next-generation sequencing and isotope ecology.

Camille Defrenne

At age 7, Camille promised herself to be a paleontologist. she is now digging soil, not looking for dinosaurs’ bones, admittedly, but looking for somethings equally fascinating: roots and mycorrhizal fungi. After getting an engineer diploma in Agronomy in France, Camille got my PhD in Forestry, under the supervision of Dr. Suzanne Simard, at the University of British Columbia, Canada. she then joined the Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to work with Dr. Colleen Iversen and unravel root and mycorrhizal fungal dynamics in a warming peatland.

Eva Snyder

Eva was born in Vancouver, BC and grew up moving around BC and the Yukon. She started with the Mother Tree Project in 2016 as a field crew member during initial site layouts, and has continued on with the project for the past four years as a field and lab technician. Eva began her forest-sciences education at Selkirk College in the West Kootenays and finished her Bachelor’s degree in Urban Forestry at the University of British Columbia. She is currently pursuing a PhD under the mentorship of Dr. Suzanne Simard. Her research is based in BC’s Western redcedar forests, investigating the role of below-ground microbial feedbacks for tree defences and inter-species carbon flow.

Gabriel Orrego

Gabriel is from Chile and prior to starting his Master’s degree in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver he had lived all his life in a nature sanctuary in the Andes Mountains where his family manages a wildlife rescue center. Since he was very young he worked as a wilderness guide in some of the most remote old growth forests of Chile. His experiences gave him a very strong connection with nature and an endless curiosity about it. His research topic for his M.Sc. degree was investigating the role of Mother Trees as the source of the underground flux in the transfer of resources between individual trees and bringing in the concept of legacy in old trees, and how this is transmitted from one generation to the next. He did an experiment where he showed that mother trees of western hemlock, transferred carbon to small seedlings established on nurse logs in an old growth forest. He is currently working NGO called Fungi foundation, which is dedicated to the research, conservation and communication of fungi in Chile. Particularly his work is focused on demonstrating the importance of mycorrhizal network in forest ecosystems.

Joseph Cooper

Joseph is pursuing a PhD in Forest Biology and Management at the University of Alberta under Dr. Justine Karst. His research was conducted at the John Prince Mother Tree site near Fort St James, as well as at Kamloops, the Wellsville Mountain National Wilderness, and Cedar Breaks National Monument in Utah. His research is focused on the intersection of belowground ecology and dendroecology. He is primarily interested in old-growth and cold-tolerant forests across western North America. Prior to starting at the University of Alberta, he received his undergraduate B.Sc. degree in Conservation and Restoration Ecology from Utah State University located in his hometown of Logan, Utah. Previous work and research experience focused on old-growth forests within the western United States. Joseph is co-supervised by Suzanne Simard.

Undergraduate Students

Lucas Bailey
Julia Burkhart
Abbey Clancy
Joshua Green
Rachel Green

Thomson Harris
Liam Jones
Eddy Kapp
Arianna Murphy-Steed
Erin Pippus

Alyssa Robinson
Eva Snyder
Matt Thompson
Curtis Rock
Hannah Sachs

Nava Sachs
Sophie Vanderbanck
Bailey Williams

Graduate Students