Adelia Barber

Ph.D., Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Adelia BarberAdelia Barber hiked the Continental Divide, worked on a conservation project in Tanzania, and studied environmental science as an undergraduate at Brown University in Rhode Island. But her old stomping grounds, the Santa Cruz Mountains, kept calling her back.

"I have a strong sense of place and I really identify with the area here," said the 28-year-old graduate of Los Gatos High School.

Now a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, Barber said she was happy to come back. "I'm a total plant junkie and I love California's plant life--the redwoods, the chaparral, the desert wildflowers," she said.

Because she's also a self-described math geek, Barber decided to explore a relatively new area of plant ecology that uses computer models to understand plant populations. At UCSC, she found a terrific advisor: Daniel Doak, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. And she found the perfect species to study: bristlecone pines, the oldest living things on the planet.

"As a fluke, before grad school, I took a road trip to the White Mountains to see the bristlecone pines," explains Barber. "I just fell in love with them."

Bristlecone pines live as long as 4,000 years, and because of their dense and resinous wood they remain standing thousands of years after they die. These trees offer ecologists a rare window on populations from many climatic periods of the past.

Barber joined Doak's lab in 2004 and began trekking to the UC White Mountain Research Station to collect field data. Back in Santa Cruz, she started developing mathematical models to study how bristlecone pine populations have adapted to environmental change in the past. Ultimately, the research could lead to predictions about how global warming might affect the trees in the future.

She was an early and featured partner with Google Earth.