About Sam

The summers of my childhood and teenage years were spent in wilderness areas in the western US doing research with my father.   We spent the summer of 1983 in the Uintas during an extremely wet summer finishing up his dissertation project.  I slept in a wet sleeping bag and ate freeze dried food for more than six weeks.   We finally published the data from that project four years ago.  Growing up in those beautiful places and being exposed to the cool biology happening in those mountains grew on me.  At some point I realized my Dad was getting paid to do what most people do for vacation.   So many times I've sat under a sugar maple, aspen or Joshua tree forest, eating my lunch unable to believe I get paid to do this.

I completed my undergraduate and MS degrees at Brigham Young University studying lichens as biomonitors of air quality. My Ph.D work focused on the impacts of soil acidification on the physiology and ecology of maple forests of Pennsylvania.  I studied climate change impacts on grasslands of northern California as a postdoctoral researcher.  Since coming back to Utah I have started major research projects in the aspen-conifer forests and Mojave and Great Basin deserts.

I love reading, especially with my kids and I have a fairly serious passion for mountain biking.