Science and Sandwiches featuring Silvia Alvarez Clare, PhD

June 4, 2021
12:15 pm – 12:45 pm

Virtual via Zoom, please preregister for link

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Program Series:
Climate, Energy, and EnvironmentScience and Society

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Join C2ST and Dr. Silvia Alvarez Clare for our monthly Science and Sandwiches Program! On the first Friday of every month, we sit down with an expert during the lunch hour to chat about life, science, careers, a day on the job, and whatever else you’re interested in learning about them–within reason, anyways.

Dr. Silvia Alvarez Clare is the Director of Global Tree Conservation at The Morton Arboretum. Ecology is the study of the relationships between organisms (in this case, trees) and their physical surroundings. Conservation includes the intentional preservation and protection of something, in this case, planned management of a natural resource to prevent exploitation, destruction, or neglect of environments and wildlife. Tree ecology studies these aspects in wooded areas, including rainforest, deciduous, evergreen, temperate, and boreal forests. Silvia’s research focuses on using long-term monitoring, experimentation, and conservation-driven methods to better understand how environmental factors, such as changes in climate, soil nutrients, or land use affect plant communities. Register today to find out what’s growing on with Silvia.  

At C2ST, we believe that access to experts is important in ensuring that science is for everyone, which is why we want to host these conversations. We encourage you to grab some grub, make yourself comfortable, tune into the conversation, and if you’re up for it, ask a question.

This program is part of the Alvin H. Baum Environmental Series. For nearly two decades, Joel M. Friedman and the Alvin H. Baum Family Fund have advanced education, environment, anti-violence, and health and human service strategies and initiatives throughout Chicagoland. Together with community partners, the Fund endeavors to understand and address the causes rather than the symptoms of today’s most wicked challenges.

Event Details

Friday, June 4th from 12:15 – 12:45 pm CT, hosted through Zoom.

You will receive a Zoom link to attend the program the day of the event! We plan on allowing you to ask questions of our expert yourself! You may also use our Q& app to ask live questions during the program or send in your questions in advance! Remember to upvote your favorite questions. To support STEM programs like this, you can DONATE to C2ST HERE!

Featured Guests

Silvia Alvarez Clare, PhD

Silvia Alvarez-Clare is the Director of Global Tree Conservation at The Morton Arboretum in Illinois, USA. Her work focuses on using long-term monitoring, manipulative experiments, and conservation-driven research to understand how environmental factors, such as changes in climate, soil nutrients, or land use, affect plant communities, mainly in tropical biodiversity hotspots. Alvarez-Clare was born in Costa Rica, where she obtained a B.S. in Biology from Universidad de Costa Rica in San José. She then earned an M.S. in Botany and a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Ecology from the University of Florida (UF), Gainesville. 

For her Ph.D. work, she established a long-term fertilization experiment in the Costa Rican rainforest to explore how changes in soil nutrient availability can influence ecosystem processes, and the experiment is still ongoing today. She continued this work as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Montana and Argonne National Laboratory, studying how greenhouse gas emissions from the forest floor can also change with nutrient additions. Alvarez-Clare collaborates with the Global Trees Campaign and a member of the IUCN/SSC Global Trees Specialist Group. In addition to her research and conservation work, Alvarez-Clare is also the co-PI for Morton Arboretum’s REU Program: Integrative Tree Science in the Anthropocene. She is also passionate about increasing the participation of under-represented communities in STEM careers and an avid supporter of Women in Science.

In addition to her position at Morton, Silvia Alvarez-Clare is a guest researcher at Argonne National Laboratory. Her research in tropical ecosystems ecology has been funded by the National Science Foundation’s Doctoral Dissertation Enhancement Grant (DDEG) and Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology (PRFB), and her work published in top-tier journals such as Ecology Letters and Ecology. Alvarez-Clare is the co-leader of a local group supporting Women in Science and is part of the Tree Board for North Central College.