Research
The Boiling River
Along with others in my lab, I'm studying the plants at the Boiling River, a unique geothermal feature in the central Peruvian Amazon. As scalding hot water escapes through the Earth's crust and joins the river, the water heats up to near boiling temperatures. This creates a "natural experiment", where the river warms the surrounding air and riparian community along its course, thus creating a steep thermal gradient parallel to the river. I'm studying the tree community along the gradient, focusing on how diversity, community composition, and functional groups of plants change with increasing air temperature. Read more in my blog post here.
Learn more about the Boiling River from our collaborator, Andres Ruzo.
1-ha forest dynamics plot at Finca las Piedras
In collaboration with the Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon, I set up a 1-hectare permanent forest dynamics plot in Madre de Dios, Peru in the summer of 2021. The plot is located in a terra firme tropical moist forest and contains 550 trees representing 178 species.
The plot has been incorporated into the ForestPlots.net database and is currently part of multiple studies including one investigating tree diversity across the Amazon basin and another studying the effects of disturbance on liana abundance.
A recensus of the plot will take place in summer 2024.
Photo at left courtesy of Bill Hawthorne.
Rediscovery of Gasteranthus extinctus in Western Ecuador
In November 2021, I was part of an international team of botanists who embarked on an expedition to rural Western Ecuador with the aim of documenting rare and endemic flora presumed to be extinct.
Our journey was a success, as we rediscovered a plant named for its own extinction, Gasteranthus extinctus. Our study was published in PhytoKeys and calls for the conservation of remnant forest patches in a highly fragmented landscape. Read more about the region and ongoing projects here.
Nutrient limitation of plant reproduction in a tropical moist forest
Prior to starting my PhD, I had the fortune of working with Dr. Joe Wright at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. We carried out a study that examined how tropical tree reproduction is limited by soil nutrients, and found phosphorus to be the most important limiting nutrient in a Panamanian rainforest. Read our published study here.