Landscape Physiological Ecology

Field sampling kit for collecting wood cores with a prepaid return envelope. By providing our collaborators with methodology and equipment, we facilitate the ability to carry out standardized sampling around the United States.

Plants serve as a critical control on the flow of water and carbon across the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. However, not all plants are equal in their structure and function. Therefore, how they mediate water and carbon cycling varies, particularly in relation to climate. Our goal is to provide fundamental insights into what drives patterns we observe at the scale of Earth by starting with the structure and function we observe at the scale of the leaf and plant. We do so in service of understanding the effects of global climate change. Over the past 15 years, three key principles have emerged that guide how we approach science:

• Our research starts with questions, rather than with methods. As a result, we often have to reach across disciplines or combine multiple disciplines to answer our research questions.

 

• Our questions focus on processes that are likely to be important, but have historically been dismissed as insignificant or simply been too complicated to measure.

 

• Our results are most meaningful when they have bearing on patterns observed at large spatial and temporal scales. Thus, we must look for clever ways to make many, many more observations.