Arden Brewer

Undergraduate Fellow

“I've always been in awe of trees. I get this sense of comfort when surrounded by them. The possibility of spending my summer surrounded by them sounded hard to pass up.

My grandpa’s back yard had so many trees and different plants. I remember when I was a kid, him going out and telling me little things about each one. But now I'm out here and I can use some of the things that he showed me to identify them, and I get to learn what that tree's actual name is. It's a lot of fun.”

If you were a tree, what species do you think you'd be?

“I would like to think that I'd be a dogwood. I try to be tough and resilient and they're super tough. I just measured one yesterday that literally had fallen over and had a giant tree smush it and I was like, this is dead, right? And then it was alive. They live through so much, it's insane.”

Arden worked with Jonathan Myers' Forest Biodiversity team during summer 2018. Learn more about their long-term temperate forest research here and their prescribed fire experiment here.