Natural and managed ecosystems provide critical products and services necessary to maintain the quality of life expected by the American people, including clean air and water, wildlife, food, products derived from plants and animals, and aesthetically pleasing environments for recreation and enjoyment. Maintaining these ecosystem products and services in the face of rapidly expanding human populations and resource consumption requires a better understanding of ecological systems at landscape scales (greater than one square mile). The reciprocal link between the spatial and temporal dynamics of landscape elements and ecological processes is a first principle of landscape ecology, and we seek to use this link to make reliable predictions to guide management and policy decisions.
Research Goals
Study spatial and temporal ecological dynamics to understand key processes driving natural disturbance, wildlife populations, forest dynamics, growth, and carbon sequestration.
Predict the cumulative and interacting effects of natural and human disturbances on ecosystem products and services at multiple scales.
Selected Research
- Conduct studies quantifying causal relationships among landscape-scale ecological processes, including those processes influenced by global phenomena such as climate change and invasive species.
- Develop predictive models of forest dynamics integrating the multi-scale drivers underlying natural and anthropogenic disturbances, using both empirical and simulation approaches.
- Develop predictive models underlying the establishment and spread of invasive species.
- Apply landscape process models to understand the cumulative and interacting effects of natural disturbances , human disturbances , population growth, and changes in fiber markets on ecosystem products and services.
- Integrate predictive models from various science disciplines.
- Predict the effects of multiple global changes (including climate change and invasive species) on forest composition, spatial pattern, and biodiversity.
- Conduct field studies to fill knowledge gaps that hamper our ability to understand causation or make reliable predictions of the effects of landscape change.
- Evaluate the effects of intensive, large-scale management of landscapes for multi-species conservation or woody crops for bioenergy on ecological communities, insects and disease and native biotic diversity.
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