Liam Gilson. I’m a PhD student under the supervision of Dr. Bianca Eskelson, and started my program in fall of 2020. My research interests center around applying techniques from statistics and biometrics to answer challenging questions surrounding forest management under climate change. Existing decision support tools, such as growth models, often lack adequate sensitivity to climatic factors. For my dissertation work, I will develop methods and tools to examine genotype-environment interactions in the timber species of BC in order to better predict growth performance under future conditions.
I did my undergraduate work at the University of Minnesota, from which I graduated in 2018 with a BSc. in Forest Management. I decided to pursue forest biometrics at a graduate level, and I graduated from Oregon State University in 2020 with my MSc in Sustainable Forest Management; my thesis examined the environmental drivers of Douglas-fir growth in Oregon and New Zealand, quantifying the principle causes of improved exotic-range growth performance.
Supervisor: Bianca Eskelson
I completed my BSc in Conservation & Resource Studies from UC Berkeley in 2022. Prior to beginning my MSc, I worked with Dr. John Battles at the University of California (UC), Berkeley on dendrochronology for the US Fire & Fire Surrogates study. I also worked with the Stephens Lab at UC Berkeley studying the impacts of high-severity wildfires on giant sequoias in the southern Sierra Nevada.
Supervisors: Bianca Eskelson and Lori Daniels