Dryland ecohydrology, vegetation dynamics including drought-triggered die-off, wind and water erosion, gradients of woody plants (grassland-forest continuum), ecosystem carbon dynamics, enabling improved decision making and management for land use, pollution, and global change.
My research program is highly interdisciplinary and bridges diverse aspects of environmental science, largely from an ecosystems perspective. Much of my work lies within the mission of unraveling competing and interrelated processes in water-limited ecosystems within the grassland-forest continuum, gradients of woody plant coverage that include shrublands, savannas, and woodlands, as well as grasslands and forests. I am interested in interactions between woody and herbaceous plants and the associated patterns of canopy patches of woody plants and the intercanopy patches that separate them. I have focused on coupled and interrelated processes between ecology and hydrology (the emerging interdisciplinary area of ecohydrology), carbon and water, runoff and runon, evaporation and transpiration, and water and wind erosion. I am also interested in rapid vegetation changes associated with fire and drought and the subsequent hydrological responses. I strive to enable improved decision making and management regarding issues of land use, pollution, and global change.
