Congratulations to Georgia Harrison

Congratulations to Georgia Harrison who successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation in July entitled Controlling annual grasses in sagebrush communities with higher resistance and resilience is crucial to prevent fire risk and invasion expectation. Georgia was advised by both Eva Strand in the Department of Forest, Rangeland and Fire Sciences and Tim Prather in the Department of Plant Sciences. While at U of I, Georgia helped teach several FRFS courses, including REM 459 Rangeland Ecology and REM 429 Landscape Ecology.

Georgia’s research stresses the importance of understanding the interaction across fuel types (grasses and shrubs) and emphasizes the importance of low cost, accurate assessment of rangeland condition, fuel abundance and fuel distribution through use of unmanned aerial systems. Additionally, Georgia’s work demonstrates that the use of relatively new herbicide, indaziflam, is effective at controlling annual grasses for at least two years and can be an effective tool for mitigating the fire risk posed by invasive, annual grasses with minimal impact on native species.

In August, Georgia will be joining the USDA Agricultural Research Service Jornada Experimental Range and Rangeland Research program as a as a post-doctoral research ecologist. The mission of the Experimental Range is to increase sustainability and resilience of multiple land uses in rangelands through collaborative research on ecosystem change, innovative livestock production systems, ecological restoration, and climate adaptation alongside national and global research on land health monitoring and decision support tools. Learn More.