TONIGHT! 6-8pm join in person or….zoom link:

https://zoom.us/j/95159159507?pwd=FxFeK4vdsUUfA6Fo9XiV8cUH5FUMTR.1

Zoom code: 655402

Dr. Lauren Czaplicki shares a mushroom tale of two forests: one pre-burn and one post-burn.

In the story of the pre-burn forest, local mushrooms are the characters that naturally reduce fuel loads in our forests by rotting dead & dying trees, building soils, and increasing the water holding capacity of our landscape. Dr. Czaplicki's company, Fungal Solutions, implements the ColdFire protocol in the western slope to speed up this fuel reduction. After all, mycelium can run but they can't hide. Here she'll do a show and tell about how she takes advantage of that to tackle local wood types.

 In the story of the post-burn forest, mushrooms and other fungi are the characters that reduce contaminants and ready the soils for revegetation. Historically, frequent low intensity fires left a mosaic of unburned islands, safe havens where fungi can wait out the fire to pounce on disturbed soils afterwards. Now, our catastrophic-scale fires are too intense and deplete these safe havens. In collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society, CoRenewal, Point Blue, and the Universities of California & Connecticut among others, Fungal Solutions is testing different ways to bring fungi into disturbed ecosystems across the mountain west.  Here Dr. Czaplicki will share recent break throughs and best practices. In some cases, we've seen promising contaminant reduction! Come learn how you can snag a remaining spot and expand the study to our state.

Dr. Lauren Czaplicki holds a Doctorate, a Master's, and a Bachelor's with work in environmental engineering. For her dissertation work at Duke University, she coaxed native soil fungi to clean up legacy pollution from Superfund sites. Since grad school, she's been collaborating with the mycelium to solve big environmental problems including desertification, rangeland soil restoration, pollution remediation, post fire revegetation, and fire mitigation. In her downtime, she can be found singing to the boletes in the San Juans. Presenter TBD