There is perhaps no more pressing issue today than that of how climate change will affect ecosystems, societies, and life on Earth. Our research is driven by a passion for forests and a concern about their future in a changing world. In particular, we are focused on how climate extremes like drought and heat waves impact tree physiology and forest carbon-water fluxes, how the ways that trees can regulate their water use and carbon allocation impact their resilience to stressors, and how future climate change may alter the ability of forests to take up and store carbon.

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We tackle these questions using multiple approaches, including plant eco-physiology, dendroecology, eddy covariance, stable isotope techniques, and vegetation modeling. These toolkits allow us to investigate the impacts of global change on forests across scales, from individual trees to entire ecosystems. We believe that such diverse approaches are necessary to build a holistic understanding of the challenges that the world’s forests face.

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Our lab is located in the Department of Biology at West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV.