This Spring Break, Lizzie and Dessa spent three days on Jekyll Island conducting soil mapping surveys with Lizzie’s long-time collaborator, Trenton Franz from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. With the energetic help of Rose Parham (Ecology major) and Weston…
With long-time collaborator Trenton Franz, we recently developed a dynamic cellular automata model that incorporates the factors that our empirical research has shown to strongly govern vegetation dynamics at the patch scale (2-4m): rain event frequency and intensity, surface water…
With Trenton Franz and Dan Rubenstein, we have been monitoring 24 30-m transects on a hillslope at Koija, Kenya for 7 years. On each transect, we monitor the vegetation patch structure, composition, and soil surface condition using the Landscape Function…
Georgia has one of the least-developed coastlines on the Atlantic seaboard, and a lot of that coastline is salt marsh — hypnotically beautiful salt marsh. While the graceful mosaics of water, marsh, and upland hammocks may appear “untouched,” coastal ecosystems…
Jekyll Island State Park is a veritable “turducken” of some of the best things the Georgia Coast has to offer: It’s a state park with beautiful natural areas, the Sea Turtle Center, and fantastic conservation programs; it’s a tourist destination…
This project is investigating how and why Sansevieria volkensii, a humble succulent native to Kenyan drylands, has become a pernicious pest plant. The proliferation has coincided with intensifying grazing pressure in the area and drastic reduction of grass cover. The…