Juan 3:16 ∴ Carpe Vitae

RESEARCH:

I focus at the intersection of 3 areas of ecology applied to forests:

Demographic
​Dynamics

Forests & Global Change

Plant Functional & Physiological Ecology

NEWS:

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  • Exciting update: I will join the department of Ecology and Conservation Biology at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX, this fall as Assistant Professor of Forestry.   
  • Gig em Aggies!    



  • April 2025:  In Collaboration with folks at the University of Florida -- The Solis Lab, Rob Guralnik, Jeremy Lichstein and researchers at the Dept. of Entomology -- we have new work out in PNAS, led by Dr. Yunpeng Liu "Non-native tree invaders lead to declines in native tree species richness".  

    This work finds that Eastern US forests invaded by non-native tree species experience a decrease in richness of native tree species, losing rare trees that occupy a similar niche to the invader. Studying the effects of invasive species on forest health is difficult given the myriad factors that affect forests, including human impacts such as climate change. In search of generalizable effects on invasive tree species, we examined the diversity and biomass of native and non-native tree species in Eastern USA forests from 1995-2023. The analysis included more than 5 million tree measurements from 158,642 plots in the US Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis database, finding that, in the 4,807 plots containing at least one non-native species, the richness, or number, of native species declined when compared to plots with only native species. Native species that disappeared tended to occupy a similar functional niche to the invading species. In contrast, when native species were found newly growing in a plot, overall species richness increased. In the short term, mitigating the effects of invasive species on native species diversity should be prioritized relative to other aspects of ecosystem functioning such as biomass production.
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  • March 2025:  I am now affiated with the Department of Biology at Colorado State University as a postdoctoral affiliate.  I am working with Dr. Anping Chen.  
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  • January 2025:  In collaboration with Jason Vlemickx, Simon Queenborough and Liza Comita (Yale) and folks at the Yasuní Forest dynamics plot in Ecuador (Renato Valencia, Nancy Garwood and Margaret Metz), we have a study published in Ecology Letters which demonstrates the negative effects of warming (increasing nighttime minimum temperatures) and increasing relative humidity on tropical tree reproduction. The study demonstrates that the convergence of warmer nights and wetter atmospheric conditions occurring during the flowering phenological year and the onset and peak of the fruiting season have negatively impacted seed production over the past two decades at Yasuní. ​
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  • December 2024:  New work is out in Plants, People, Planet - "Anthromes and forest carbon responses to global change".  Incorporating an Anthromes (i.e., Anthropogenic biomes) perspective with CMIP6 carbon climate feedbacks, we show how recent past tropical forest land carbon stocks are uniquely vulnerable to global change.   Human population pressures, including land use trends are greater in tropical than temperate forests.  Acknowledging and harmonizing competing resource demands (including conservation and land carbon storage) in the tropics is key to the global forest carbon sink. Modeled (CMIP6) land carbon stock sensitivities to CO2 and temperature (1900-2023) were greatest for tropical wildland forests (areas without significant permanent human presence/impact), potentially illustrating their vulnerability to global change.  Results were robust across the nine Earth System Models used in our analyses of carbon climate feedbacks, yet results should be understood in the context that it is very difficult to model tropical forest land carbon stocks. Thanks to ORNL Biology and Environment and the New Phytologist Foundation for putting on a symposium on that greatly stimulated my thinking on this topic. 
  • August 2024: I attended the Ecological Society of America meeting 2024 in Long Beach, CA.  I presented a poster on my ORISE post-doc work: "Hurricane disturbance and the growth-mortality trade-off of Caribbean trees".  Stay tuned for more on this project. 
  • July 2024:   In collaboration with Paul Furumo (lead author) and Eric Lambin from the Stanford Doerr School for Sustainability, a paper has been recently published in PNAS titled, "Land conflicts from overlapping claims in Brazil’s rural environmental registry".   We use the Brazilian CAR (Cadastro Ambiental Rural) to assess land-conflict in the Brazilian Amazon finding that conflicting land claims are more prevalent on larger land parcels, in more densely settled areas, and in areas with less secure land tenure.  We show deforestation occurs more frequently these areas of conflicting land claims resulting in an overestimation of forest reserves by up to 9.7 million hectares when considering double-counted and deforested areas of reserves.  This work documents a widespread, overlooked form of Forest Code noncompliance and how self-declaration of land tenure is inadequate to decrease conflicts.  Harmonizing competing land claims is key to conserving the Brazilian Amazon and its vital forest carbon sink.