RESEARCH

My research interests fall at the interface of ecology and international development.  Research ranges from the ecological consequences of global change drivers such as biodiversity loss, land use change, and exotic plant invasions, to the influence of ecological structure and fuction on ecosystem services valuable to society.

Preliminary doctoral research:
Ecological regulation and valuation of ecosystem services in the Millennium Villages (Kenya & Tanzania)
Research currently examines the influence of ecological structure and function on the integrated economic value of multiple provisioning ecosystem services.  The main objective is to understand the changes in ecological regulation and economic valuation as an increasing number of provisioning services (i.e. commodities) are derived from an ecosystem.  Since plant selection (advertent or otherwise) is a primary nexus of land management decisions, this work stresses community/ecosystem plant functional ecology.  Experimental and theoretical ecology provide us with predictions for service links to plant functional diversity.  These predictions include that  I) broader profiles of ecosystem processes and services should require greater supporting plant functional diversity (Hector & Bagchi, 2007);  II) ecosystem influences of diversity are mediated by spatiotemporal exchanges between land cover types (Loreau et al., 2003), and  III) diversity influences vary widely in sign and effect size in accordance with spatial and temporal scales (Swift et al., 2004).  These fundamentally ecological patterns may prove important for understanding regulation of ecosystem service values, a key requirement for ecology to advance measuring and predicting feedbacks of individual and social choice (i.e. land management) on ecosystem services.

These concepts are being tested with a ‘natural’ experiment approach in collaboration with the Millennium Villages Project (MVP; www.millenniumvillages.org), a multi-sectoral development initiative in 11 sub-Saharan African countries, coordinated by the Earth Institute at Columbia University.  Fallows on farms in Sauri MVP (Nyanza Province, western Kenya) and Mbola MVP (Tabora Region, western Tanzania) produce fuelwood, timber, and livestock, and regenerate soil capacity for subsequent crop production.  The ostensible biophysical influence of ecological factors (primarily soils, vegetation, and surrounding land cover) on these provisioning ecosystem services will be tracked across years, and hedonic pricing of ecological structure and function will be based on service market values (individually and in aggregate).

This work is funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) under TransLinks (www.translinks.org), a collaborative project of the Earth Institute and the Wildlife Conservation Society, and other partners.  TransLinks seeks to advance synthetic, interdisciplinary understanding of the links between poverty alleviation (Wealth), governance (Power), and sustainable management of natural resources (Nature), toward informing international development and biodiversity conservation practice.

Other selected research projects, previous and on-going:

Pulitzer Internship: land degradation and biodiversity surveys, and data management capacity building (Uganda & Tanzania)
Conducted Gates Foundation-funded field research and training, establishing baselines for land degradation and plant biodiversity in conjunction with the multi-sectoral development interventions implemented by the Millennium Villages Project in Ruhiira MVP in southwestern Uganda, and Mbola MVP in western Tanzania.  In Mbola, also assisted in building data management capacity by conducting training in statistical analysis and data processing.

The influence of scale on the relationships among diversity, ecosystem function, and invasibility (upstate New York) (Click for complete thesis)
Thesis research for a master’s degree at Columbia University investigated the influences forest understory plant and soil microbial (prokaryotes and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi) community structure on ecosystem processes (understory NPP, decomposition, N mineralization, and exotic plant invasion) at Black Rock Forest in upstate New York.  Microbial diversity was characterized on a molecular basis with T-RFLP.  Specifically, I examined observationally whether plant diversity and composition influences shift in accordance with scale of ecological association (or habitat scaling). This work was conducted as part of a long-term study to simulate the ecosystem consequences of foundation taxon loss in oak-dominated northeastern forests that might follow invasion by the sudden oak death pathogen (Phytophthora ramorum).

Trait-based functional ecology of native and exotic plant performance
With Naeem lab colleagues, investigating how the traits of native, exotic invasive, and naturalized exotic plants mediate their performance.  This work is based on plant traits and plant performance measured in prairies recovering from agriculture in Cedar Creek Natural History Area, Minnesota, and is examining how the traits of the native plant community modulate exotic performance, and how exotics alter the trait space of the plant community.

Fire ecology for management of Nature Conservancy preserves (southeastern North Carolina)
Investigated the effects of experimental surface and peat fires in a tall pocosin bog community in The Nature Conservancy’s Green Swamp Preserve, and the response of a pond pine woodland community in the US Navy Dare County Bombing Range to a prescribed burn (in collaboration with the US Forest Service Intermountain Fire Sciences Lab, USFS-IFSL, Missoula, Montana), for the US Air Force Fire Management Plan.  Designed, implemented and supervised a program using photography for efficient monitoring of large-scale, long-term success of fire management in protecting habitat of rare and endangered species in twenty savanna and pocosin preserves.