Amy King

Amy has worked for Solano RCD since July 2008 and manages a variety of projects that aim to involve landowners, farmers and ranchers in creating wildlife habitat, controlling erosion, improving water quality and sequestering carbon on their land. She also monitors urban water quality for the cities of Fairfield, Suisun City and Vallejo in partnership with other Bay Area groups, and works with the Solano County Water Agency to manage a County-wide Small Grant program for flood control. Her previous work experience includes running a small landscaping business, conducting research on nutrient cycling and greenhouse gas emissions in agricultural systems, and environmental outreach on climate change and sustainable agriculture at UC Davis. She earned a BA in Biology from UC Santa Cruz in 1997 and an MS in Ecology from UC Davis in 2003.

Dr. Jeff Creque

Dr. Jeff Creque is co-founder of the Marin Carbon Project and a Director at the Carbon Cycle Institute, where he provides senior leadership on carbon farming and land management. He brings thirty years of applied experience and theoretical training to the task of informing and facilitating the goals of the Marin Carbon Project. He is an agricultural and rangeland consultant and Natural Resources Conservation Service certified nutrient management planning specialist. In addition, he has many organizational affiliations including: Founding Board Member, Alliance for Local Sustainable Agriculture (Marin); Co-Founder, Bolinas-Stinson Beach Compost Project; Agricultural Director, Apple Tree International; and Co-Founder, West Marin Compost Coalition. Dr. Creque holds a PhD in Rangeland Ecology from Utah State University, and is a California State Board of Forestry Certified Professional in Rangeland Management.  Dr. Jeff Creque has authored seminal Carbon Farm Plans utilized by ranchers within the Climate Beneficial Wool Pool, and he currently oversees Carbon Farm Plan training for technical service providers within the Northern California Fibershed, helping to expand the capacity of planners within our region..

Jessica Chiartas

Jessica Chiartas is a PhD candidate in Soils & Biogeochemistry at the University of California, Davis. She is interested in better understanding the application and impacts of soil health principles and/or regenerative agriculture on a soil type, cropping system, climate specific basis, as well as the metrics and methodologies necessary to validate and drive policy initiatives and economic incentive programs. She has supported a diverse group of stakeholders in developing monitoring and verification programs and conducts on-the-ground, in-field sampling to establish baselines and continuously monitor soil health and soil carbon stocks (to a minimum depth of 60 cm). She is also currently working in collaboration with NRCS to develop a website, a series of short videos, and an interactive educational experience that highlights the inextricable connection between soil and life and raises awareness about the many solutions to global challenges, that lie right beneath our feet. Jessica supports the Climate Beneficial Wool Program through her direct measurement of rangeland and cropland soils within Fibershed’s producer program

Briana Schnelle

Briana Schnelle is a Partner Biologist with Point Blue Conservation Science’s Working Lands Group. Partnering with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, Briana works with farmers and ranchers to develop conservation plans focused on improving the overall health of the land and ecosystems that help sustain working lands. Through ecological monitoring of soil health, vegetation, and bird communities on private lands in Modoc County, CA and Washoe County, NV, Briana helps landowners make informed management decisions while contributing to the larger body of knowledge of rangeland science. Briana supports Fibershed’s Climate Beneficial Wool Program through her work implementing and monitoring carbon farm practices and biodiversity conservation programs at Bare Ranch.

Lynette Niebrugge

Lynette Niebrugge works as the Carbon Farm Planning Manager for Carbon Cycle Institute where she focuses on building the capacity of land managers and agricultural conservation planners to conduct carbon farm planning and implementation. In partnership with Fibershed, Lynette is working to assisting in developing an approach and implementable strategy for small farm carbon farm planning and implementation, including support on developing land-owner education. Lynette received her undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois in Natural Resources and Environmental Science and her Masters degree in Soil Science from California State Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo. She held a forestry position within the United States Forest Service for several year before joining the Marin Resource Conservation District in 2011 where she focused on education and implementation of carbon farming. She is a founding member of the Marin Carbon Project a regional coalition of ranchers, land managers and government agencies devoted to supporting agriculture as a solution to climate change. 

Dr. Marcia DeLonge

Marcia DeLonge is a senior scientist in the Food & Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Dr. DeLonge conducts scientific research and analyses identifying practices that lead to healthy, sustainable food and farming systems. Her work seeks viable opportunities within agriculture to both adapt to and mitigate climate change.

Before joining UCS, Dr. DeLonge was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. She worked on a multi-stakeholder project that combined agriculture and climate science by seeking climate change solutions on grazing lands. Her field work and life cycle modeling helped reveal the potential for compost applications to promote sustainable agriculture while mitigating climate change.

Dr. DeLonge has a Ph.D. and M.S. in environmental science from the University of Virginia, where she developed expertise in atmospheric science, hydrology, ecosystem science, and numerical modeling.  Dr. Marcia DeLonge conducted a foundational and comprehensively boundaried life cycle assessment for wool garments produced from wool raised on California rangelands; the LCA includes the role of carbon exchanges between soil and atmosphere where sheep graze and follows the emissions mapping through the garment use phase.

Dr. Cindy Daley

Dr. Cynthia Daley is a professor within the College of Agriculture at California State University, Chico, and currently serves as the Rawlin's Endowed Professor for Environmental Literacy, and the Director for the Center for Regenerative Agriculture & Resilient Systems. Cindy is originally from Illinois, where her family has been actively engaged in the farming profession for more than four generations. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Illinois, her doctorate at University of California Davis. She joined the CSU Chico, COA faculty in 1997 and later founded the Organic Dairy Education & Research Program in 2006. Seeing the need to grow the ecological farming movement, Daley went on to co-create the Regenerative Agriculture Initiative in 2016 and guided this program to Center status in May of 2019. The new Center for Regenerative Agriculture & Resilient Systems is a consortium of interdisciplinary faculty and farmers who recognize the ecological benefits of regenerative farming practices including water conservation, soil fertility, and carbon sequestration. The Center's guiding principle is that agriculture, when done regeneratively, can be the solution to soil degradation and climate change.

Keith Paustian

Keith Paustian is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and Senior Research Scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. A major focus of his work involves modeling, field measurement and development of assessment tools for soil carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions from soils. He has published over 280 journal articles and book chapters. Previous and current research activities include development of models and inventory methodology used to estimate US soil C and N2O emissions that are reported annually by EPA to the UNFCCC; development of a web-based tool (COMET-FarmTM) for estimating on-farm greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and carbon sequestration used by USDA (http://cometfarm.nrel.colostate.edu/) and project-scale systems for GHG assessment of sustainable land management projects in developing countries (http://www.carbonbenefitsproject.org/). He also serves as project director for the Bioenergy Alliance Network of the Rockies (BANR – http://banr.nrel.colostate.edu/) which is a consortium of universities, industry and the US Forest Service, researching the potential for sustainable bioenergy production from beetle-kill trees and forest residues. Professional service activities include Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC 2006 National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Methods and the IPCC 2003 Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) and two National Academy of Science committees (in 2010 and 2018) related to land use, greenhouse gases and climate change mitigation. He served as a member of the US Carbon Cycle Science Steering Group, which provides expert input to Federal Agencies involved in climate and carbon cycle research. He also served on the Voluntary Carbon Standard Steering Committee for Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) and on numerous other national and international committees involving climate and carbon cycle research. He is a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America and 2015 recipient of the Soil Science Society of America’s Outstanding Research Award.

Kelsey Brewer

Kelsey Brewer is an agroecology researcher and consultant focusing on ecosystem biogeochemistry, soil microbial ecology, and plant-soil feedback. His current research looks at the dynamics of integrated crop-livestock production systems, specifically focusing on the mechanistic interplay and synergy between ecosystem biodiversity and soil functioning. His consulting work centers on a whole-systems approach in leveraging well-researched relationships between agroecosystem productivity, spatial and temporal biodiversity, and disturbance. His passion for agroecology stems from his background as a small-scale biodiverse farmer. Kelsey Brewer is completing his PhD in the Plant Sciences Department of UC Davis under Dr. Gaudin; the publication of his thesis will support an in-depth understanding of the role of sheep in vineyard systems.  Kelsey Brewer has supported Fibershed’s producer community and Climate Beneficial Wool Program through direct soil sampling, dynamic analysis of results, and his ongoing research with Kaos Sheepoutfit at the Napa Resource Conservation district research site.

Research Partners

Dr Amélie Gaudin

Dr Amélie Gaudin is an Assistant professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Gauden obtained her Ph.D. in Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, Canada, her work specifically focuses upon multifunctional agricultural systems where biodiversity and ecosystem services serve as a basis for improvement. Her comprehensive approach to research offers opportunities to deepen our understanding of resilience while maintaining agricultural sustainability in a time of climatic change. Dr Gaudin’s connection with the Climate Beneficial Wool Pool centers on her research that looks at the impacts of integrating livestock into croplands, with a specific study of the soil health impacts of re-integrating sheep into vineyard systems. She is the primary investigator for research that is taking place at the Napa Resource Conservation District in collaboration with Kaos Sheepoutfit.

Dr. Whendee Silver

Dr. Whendee Silver is the Rudy Grah Chair and Professor of Ecosystem Ecology and Biogeochemistry in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at U.C. Berkeley. She received her PhD in Ecosystem Ecology from Yale University. Her work seeks to determine the biogeochemical effects of climate change and human impacts on the environment, and the potential for mitigating these effects. The Silver Lab is currently working on drought and hurricane impacts on tropical forests, climate change mitigation potential of grasslands, and greenhouse gas dynamics of peatlands and wetlands. Professor Silver is the lead scientist of the Marin Carbon Project, which is determining the potential for land-based climate change mitigation, particularly by composting high-emission organic waste for soil amendments to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide. The Silver Lab was awarded the Innovation Prize by the American Carbon Registry (2015) for this work. Professor Silver is a fellow of the Ecological Society of America and was named a University of California Climate Champion for 2016 for outstanding teaching, research and public service in the areas of climate change solutions, action and broad engagement. Dr. Whendee Silver’s biogeochemical lab has produced the foundational localized peer reviewed soil data that undergirds the compost application on rangelands greenhouse gas measurements utilized in the Climate Beneficial Wool Pool’s rancher members Carbon Farm Plans. The rangeland compost application is a key carbon farm practice being implemented throughout the Northern California Fibershed.