Drought Impacts on Desert Ecosystems (DIODE) Frequency of extreme droughts is expected to increase in this century. Given the high sensitivity of aridland plant communities to water availability, we can expect drylands to be particularly affected by such changes to drought cycles. My collaborator, Mariah Patton, and I coordinate seven Drought Network experiments in the hot deserts of North America at the Sevilleta LTER (Chihuahuan), CAP LTER (Sonoran), and Granite Mountains Desert Research Center (Mojave). At these sites we are measuring both above- and belowground processes to understand which mechanisms drive drought sensitivity in aridlands.
Global Change and Community Composition Global change is a dynamic process that includes a multitude of abiotic alterations. I am working with Kim Komatsu at the Smithsonian Institute to understand the effects of global change on terrestrial ecosystems worldwide. Through a fellowship with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and a synthesis group at iDiv, we are applying plant traits to global change experiments and assessing how the functional composition of these ecosystems are changing in response to increased nitrogen, increased CO2, drought, irrigation, and more.
Drought Network International Drought Experiment At Colorado State University, coordinate data management and logistics of the Drought Network's International Drought Experiment. This experiment manipulates drought at over 140 sites on six continents in order to help us understand the environmental variables that influence ecosystem sensitivity to drought. Along with data management, I am leading efforts to quantify how drought alters the biodiversity of plant communities and how prolonged drought affects terrestrial ecosystems.
Aridland Community Ecology How does community structure affect community function in arid communities? Arid land ecosystems have a unique mix of biotic and abiotic constraints on production. I am using data from the Sevilleta LTER to understand the extent to which positive relationships between community structure and function found in temperate grasslands can be related to arid ecosystems.
Nutrient Network The Nutrient Network is a standardized nutrient addition experiment replicated around the world. As the Sevilleta delegate to the Nutrient Network, I seek to compare community responses to nutrient addition across sites with variable abiotic constraints.