Search: Environmental Science Policy and Management, Ecosystems

Scott Stephens is interested in the interactions of wildland fire and ecosystems. This includes how prehistoric fires once interacted with ecosystems, how current wildland fires are affecting ecosystems, and how future fires and management may change this interaction. He is also interested in wildland fire policy and how it can be improved to meet the challenges of the next decades. How fire will be affected by climate change is a new area of research.

Whendee Silver's research interests are in the field of ecosystem ecology, and include biogeochemical cycling in the plant-soil-atmosphere interfaces, the effects of disturbance on nutrient cycling, and the relationships among nutrient cycling, land-use, and biodiversity.

Maintenance of natural fire regimes in fire-prone ecosystems, while at the same time ensuring sustainable development of wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas; climate change impacts on natural fire regimes; spatial analysis of controls on fire patterns (e.g., relative importance of vegetation characteristics versus climate/weather patterns)

Adina Merenlender's primary focus is in the field of conservation biology. In particular, She is interested in the forces that influence loss of biodiversity at all hierarchical levels from genes to ecosystems.

Lynn Huntsinger's research addresses resource management as a shaper of landscapes, with consequences for ecosystems and people. A second major area of her research is rooted in the idea that ecological change brought about by resource management can influence social relationships and cultural practice.

Biological control/population ecology/ecosystems analysis/GIS: Andrew Guitierrez's research group investigates plant - herbivore-natural enemy interactions as driven by edaphic and weather factors using physiologically based tritrophic models.

Steve Beissinger's research integrates studies of basic processes in behavioral and population ecology, and applied problems in wildlife and conservation biology. A dominant theme that draws his research in conservation biology and ecology together has been to determine the influence of environmental variation on behavior and life histories, to link these processes to population ecology, and to use this knowledge in the management of endangered or commercially valuable wildlife, and threatened ecosystems through the development of quantitative tools.

Rangeland ecosystems form extensive wildland landscapes visually dominated by grassland, shrubland, and savanna vegetation. Two important natural processes that control the structure and function of these ecosystems are herbivory and fire. Successful restoration, conservation, and use of rangelands usually requires the use of fire and herbivory and an understanding of vegetation response.

Miguel Altieri's research group uses the concepts of agroecology to obtain a deep understanding of the nature of agroecosystems and the principles by which they function. Throughout their research and writings they have aided in the emergence of agroecology as the discipline that provides the basic ecological principles for how to study, design, and manage sustainable agroecosystems that are both productive and natural resource conserving, and that are also culturally-sensitive, socially-just and economically viable.

Barbara Allen-Diaz studies how rangeland ecosystems respond to herbivory, fire, and management. She asks questions about how rangeland plant community distribution is related to physical site variables such as elevation, slope, aspect, soil type, and climate, as well as to biological and management variables such as grazing and fire history, etc. Then she examines whether the patterns in community response are predictable at various scales. She develops plant community models of ecosystem response which are intended to improve land management decision making.