10 July 2019 On the Path to Becoming A Scientist

Jill Young, was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her father was in the Air Force, in turn she spent much of her childhood moving from place to place. Her transient youth attributed in many ways, to a love of travel and exploration at an early age.

Although Jill called many places home, she spent most of her formative years in Colorado and Ohio. Following High School, Jill moved once again, this time to Florida to acquire her Bachelors in Social Science. After Florida, Jill moved back to Colorado to continue her education at Western Colorado University in Gunnison in Environmental Management.

She recently completed glacial research in the Yukon Territory. There she studied permafrost and receding glaciers. Rapid ice melt and drier climates are clear repercussions of climate change in the region.

As a member of the Siberian team, Jill is focusing on studying post wildfire, tree recruitment strategies. More specifically, Jill is collecting data on soil with Dr. Jennie DeMarco.

She is also working with Dr. DeMarco, looking into competition between larch recruitment, shrubs and grasses in Northern Cherskiy post fire sites. Will one species out compete the others? Team members will return next year to gather more data on the developments of their competition experiment.