{"id":27351,"date":"2026-08-31T08:08:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T12:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=27351"},"modified":"2026-08-30T17:24:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T21:24:01","slug":"ecosystems-are-resilient-and-so-are-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2026\/08\/31\/ecosystems-are-resilient-and-so-are-humans\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecosystems Are Resilient \u2014 And So Are Humans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Woman<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Growing up close to New York City, Ana Tobio \u201918 was surrounded by man-made structures for much of her young life. So, when she arrived in Hamilton for her first year at Colgate, she found herself immersed in an entirely different environment \u2014 one filled with more greenery than she\u2019d ever known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI felt like I entered this new world,\u201d says Tobio. \u201cI was like, \u2018Oh my god, how have forests and open space been kept from me while I was living in suburbia?\u2019 It was very eye-opening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those early moments on campus made a lasting impression on Tobio, sparking a lifelong fascination with the natural world \u2014 and eventually a career in environmental science. Today she lives on the eastern slopes of California\u2019s Sierra Nevada, where she investigates the state\u2019s diverse ecosystems as an ecologist. When she\u2019s not working, she spends much of her free time in nature, too, rock climbing and exploring the American West in her converted camper van.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding Herself in Nature<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Tobio may have grown up far from nature, but her family hails from rural Spain, where they lived as subsistence farmers and had an everyday connection with the landscape. \u201cI see [my career and lifestyle] as going back to my roots in a way,\u201d she says. \u201cThey spent a lot of time outside and were very familiar with the world around them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When her parents immigrated to America, they settled in New York City before moving to New Jersey. Like many first-generation Americans, Tobio felt pressure to succeed and validate her parents\u2019 sacrifices. She enrolled at Colgate with plans to study computer science, hoping to land a stable, high-paying job as a software engineer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But once she got to campus, her aspirations shifted. She joined the rock climbing club, went cross-country skiing, took geography courses, and started working as a research assistant with Professor Michael Loranty, who directs the environmental studies program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThose classes and that work, coupled with my budding outdoor hobbies, got me really curious about ecosystems and what is influencing their processes, structure, and composition,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After graduation, Tobio dabbled in a variety of environmental science roles before settling into ecological research. She now works for the California Native Plant Society, supporting efforts to develop a statewide hierarchical classification system for interpreting vegetation patterns across the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an associate vegetation ecologist, Tobio analyzes data to understand which plants are present, how they\u2019re grouped together, and which underlying environmental factors are shaping their distribution. These plant communities also have unique characteristics in terms of fire and disturbance regimes, climate feedbacks, wildlife habitat, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are working to inventory, classify, and map vegetation across California,\u201d she says. \u201cThe best way to think of it is similar to plant and animal hierarchies, where you have kingdom, family, genus, and species. We\u2019re doing the same thing for plant communities. You could have a conifer forest, and then you could get more specific \u2014 you have a sugar pine forest. And then even more specific \u2014 a sugar pine forest with huckleberry oak on serpentine soil. Using that classification system, we can map vegetation across the state.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the project\u2019s overarching goals is to identify plant communities that are threatened or sensitive and in most need of protection.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t save individual plant species in isolation \u2014 plants belong to communities, and those play foundational roles in ecosystems,\u201d she says. \u201cOther researchers can use this data to look at wildlife habitat or fire dynamics or watershed health, or land managers might use it to help better steward their land and determine the best areas to conduct prescribed burns.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of budget cuts, she\u2019s spending summer 2026 on sabbatical, with hopes of returning to the organization once funding becomes available again in the fall. In the meantime, she\u2019s pursuing her other passions. She\u2019s focusing on rock climbing, with a goal of climbing El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, Tobio is volunteering with the nonprofit Yosemite Conservancy as a member of the climbing management team, helping to restore degraded sites, patrol popular routes, and provide education and outreach on proper climbing practices and ethics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At press time, she was also hoping to have time for independent botanizing across the Sierra Nevada mountains. \u201cThere are historical records of where [rare plant communities] have been observed, and I\u2019d like to revisit those to see if they are still intact and take notes on population health, threats, and phenology,\u201d she says. \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll find some new populations along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resilience and Reinvention<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Though the natural world is changing fast \u2014 because of climate change, human development, pollution, wildfires, and other pressures \u2014 Tobio maintains a clear-eyed perspective. Her time in nature has taught her that the world is constantly evolving, and that there\u2019s no one \u201cbest\u201d state of being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of these ecosystems might seem like fixed witnesses across space and time, especially compared to our limited human existence, but they\u2019re actually really dynamic,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to see the places we care about changing, but what gets me through is not viewing these changes as black or white, good or bad \u2014 they\u2019re just different. Nature is so adaptable and resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, Tobio has come to see that same adaptability reflected in human life too. Like ecosystems, individuals and societies also face disruption \u2014 a lack of funding, for instance, or larger forces like social injustice, political violence, and corruption \u2014 and must decide how to respond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can begrudgingly hold on to the past, or we can take note from nature and use the tools we have available to us to build [something] new,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ana Tobio \u201918 is an ecologist in California’s Sierra Nevada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1272,"featured_media":27355,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[354,425,4271,86,1441,1676,431],"coauthors":[4270],"class_list":["post-27351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alumni-spotlights","category-alumni-updates","tag-alumni","tag-ecology","tag-environmental-science","tag-nature","tag-outdoor-education","tag-plants","tag-rock-climbing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-779","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/08\/IMG_6105.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27351"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28171,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27351\/revisions\/28171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27351"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=27351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}