Research Focus Areas
Forest Dynamics
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To understand how forests will change (or not, which is an open research question), we must comprehend how they function as biological systems. Forests are complex systems that can harbor hundreds to thousands of plant species per hectare. Reserach in the lab aims to gain a deeper understanding of how plants survive, grow, compete for resources, and reproduce, and how these processes influence forest ecosystem functioning. Uncovering the mechanistic controls that underlie forest demographics and how such controls scale to the ecosystem level is a significant motivation for my work.
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Forest Disturbance Ecology
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Concurrent with changes to the Earth's climate, anthropogenic climate change is expected to intensify and increase the frequency of disturbances, including cyclones (typhoons & hurricanes). Thus, the effect of cyclones on forests will continue to be an important agent of forest disturbance, succession and recovery. I am interested in understanding how wind disturbance interacts with the environment and other agents of change in forests (e.g., warming, drought, fire, etc.).
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The Physiological Ecology of Trees
Not all plants are created functionally equivalent. The diversity of form and function in plant life has interested the scientific mind for centuries. A comparative approach that quantifies how plant form relates to physiological function has great utility in linking the variation in plant form to ecologically-meaningful differences among and within species. Scaling functional and physiological differences to the ecosystem-level can help us understand how the biology of trees will infleunce the forests of the future.
Tree Root Functional Ecology
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Roots are fascinating. If you disagree, then I encourage you to grab a shovel, step outside, and dig just below the soil surface in a vegetated area to have a look at what you find. Chances are you will unearth a variety of things; perhaps, an earthworm or two, and an engtanglement of root systems, potentially with some associated fungi and soil microbes. Biologically, roots function in a many ways simultaneously to interact with the soil to nourish the plant and absorb water. Some of my work seeks to understand these interactions in context, and help find rules that govern them.
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