Research
Plant communities are dynamic systems that are changing over time scales of years, decades, centuries and millenia. Yet, we often don't notice or quantify these changes. As human dominance of landscapes continues to increase globally, understanding the response of plant communities to local disturbances and global climatic changes is vital in order to conserve plant diversity. My research has two related goals: (1) revealing the long-term history of plant communities using ecology, historical ecology, and paleoecological methods; and (2) contributing to the conservation of rare plants and plant communities in general.
Increasing public awareness of plants and working with private landowners to conserve them
Scientists often overlook the significant local knowledge possessed by the people who use and manage plant resources. For example, my Master's research in ethnobotany documented the considerable ecological knowledge of livestock farmers in England. And my experience working with the Landowner Incentive Program in Maryland showed me that people don't value or appreciate organisms they've never heard of.
I grew up in Southern Ontario, but it wasn't until I began working as a plant ecologist that I realized how diverse our forest plants are. There are hundreds of rare plants growing in Southern Ontario forests, but we don’t have enough information about many of them to really know how they’re doing. Some of them might be more common than we think.
Since 2013, I have been working on building species distribution models to predict where we should look for particular rare plants, based on where we already know they grow. I have also produced information sheets to help landowners recognize these plants. Most of the forests in southern Ontario are privately owned, so woodland plant conservation depends on the help and expertise of landowners. Even if they don’t know a lot about rare plants, landowners often have a lot of knowledge about their forest and how they manage it.
Finding a rare plant in your forest is like finding your grandmother’s priceless brooch in the attic. I want to help landowners find those plant gems, and work together with them to learn more about how to conserve these plants.
Scientists often overlook the significant local knowledge possessed by the people who use and manage plant resources. For example, my Master's research in ethnobotany documented the considerable ecological knowledge of livestock farmers in England. And my experience working with the Landowner Incentive Program in Maryland showed me that people don't value or appreciate organisms they've never heard of.
I grew up in Southern Ontario, but it wasn't until I began working as a plant ecologist that I realized how diverse our forest plants are. There are hundreds of rare plants growing in Southern Ontario forests, but we don’t have enough information about many of them to really know how they’re doing. Some of them might be more common than we think.
Since 2013, I have been working on building species distribution models to predict where we should look for particular rare plants, based on where we already know they grow. I have also produced information sheets to help landowners recognize these plants. Most of the forests in southern Ontario are privately owned, so woodland plant conservation depends on the help and expertise of landowners. Even if they don’t know a lot about rare plants, landowners often have a lot of knowledge about their forest and how they manage it.
Finding a rare plant in your forest is like finding your grandmother’s priceless brooch in the attic. I want to help landowners find those plant gems, and work together with them to learn more about how to conserve these plants.
Quantifying plant community change over the last few decades
When forest or grassland is removed to make way for agricultural fields or suburbs, it is easy to see that the plant communities that once lived there are now gone. But it is not so obvious how the fragmentation of vegetation affects the plant communities that now find themselves in much smaller "islands" separated by fields or suburbs. My research quantifies plant community change using detailed data compiled by plant ecologists decades ago. This type of data is known as "legacy data", because it is the legacy of ecologists who archived their data and made it available for use (see Vellend et al. 2013, American Journal of Botany).
As part of my PhD research, I revisited vegetation plots originally surveyed in the late 1960s to determine how understorey plant communities have changed on a landscape where the human population has doubled. I am using this data to answer questions such as:
|
Understanding local shifts in vegetation over centuries and millenia
The way an ecosystem looks and functions today is both a product of current interactions between the components of that ecosystem, and the result of its unique history, including climatic and cultural changes over hundreds and thousands of years. Documenting the long-term history of a plant community can provide important context in understanding its origin, its range of variability through time, the nature of its response to past climatic or cultural shifts, and legacies of these changes that remain today. This information informs conservation and restoration both in terms of setting goals for the system, and in designing strategies to meet those goals. I combine paleoecological and historical data to investigate local changes in plant communities prior to modern industrialization and urbanization.
The way an ecosystem looks and functions today is both a product of current interactions between the components of that ecosystem, and the result of its unique history, including climatic and cultural changes over hundreds and thousands of years. Documenting the long-term history of a plant community can provide important context in understanding its origin, its range of variability through time, the nature of its response to past climatic or cultural shifts, and legacies of these changes that remain today. This information informs conservation and restoration both in terms of setting goals for the system, and in designing strategies to meet those goals. I combine paleoecological and historical data to investigate local changes in plant communities prior to modern industrialization and urbanization.
|