Research FOCUS areas

Scale in ecology: linking individual dynamics to ecosystem responses

The Arctic is warming faster than any other global region, impacting - either directly or indirectly - near all terrestrial tundra plant and animal life at high latitudes. At broad scales, clear patterns of tundra greening and sea ice loss reflect the magnitude of Arctic climate change, but at the local or landscape scale, plant and animal responses are varied and spatially heterogeneous. The ‘scale’ of observation underlies these differences in patterns. Careful accounting for scale breathes greater power into the plot-based work that has been the foundation of vegetation ecology for decades, while also providing nuance to satellite-based analyses that tend to otherwise oversimplify complex dynamics by lumping them into a single pixel. I’m currently working on several projects that examine top-down and bottom-up drivers of ecological dynamics in the Arctic within and across scale domains.

Herbivory, carbon, and albedo

Large herbivores have the ability to shape the distribution and abundance of vegetation cover, which in turn can have cascading impacts on albedo, soil properties, nutrient cycling, and ultimately the carbon and energy budget of a system. I seek to understand how, when, and under which contexts, herbivores can initiate these cascades and ultimately be a tool for ecosystem management. Collaboration with and benefits for local stakeholders are foundational necessities in both this research and it’s potential management applications.

Quantitative photography and geographic image processing

New perspectives inject fresh insights into classic ideas - and newly available data from drone and static sensors are tools to this end. The parallel technological revolutions in remote image/data capture and in computational methods that ‘release’ data from a variety of sources are poised to redefine how we approach questions in ecology and conservation, not just by creating new fields of study, but by becoming part of the core toolkit for ALL ecological and conservation field-based empirical work. My own research focus seeks to interface these technological and computational advances with relevant ecological and conservation applications. Specifically, I use multi-spectral, multi-annual, and structural imaging to explore ecological and conservation applications across numerous geographic and disciplinary bounds.