About us
In the Reich lab we address questions of a fundamental nature while simultaneously focusing on issues of importance to society and the environment, often within a global environmental change framework. Major themes within our group include:
Global climate (and other environmental) change effects on temperate and boreal forests
Interactions among CO2, N, and diversity in grassland ecosystems
Natural and anthropogenic disturbance as drivers of ecosystem change
Scaling from leaves and roots to ecosystems and landscapes
Global patterns of plant physiology and chemistry
Mechanistic integration: Linking plant traits, resources, disturbances, community dynamics and ecosystem structure/function
Our objective is akin to providing an "owners manual" (although in this case, a "borrowers manual") to the operating systems of terrestrial ecosystems. We want to understand the structure and function of plants, soils, communities and ecosystems, and their interactions, and how and why they will change in the future, given the myriad variety of local to global environmental challenges. Given the complexity of ecological change, these processes almost invariably include complex interactions driven by or involving disturbance, species effects, multiple resource limitations, biogeochemistry, and competition, to name just a few. Depending on the question, we might take an ecophysiological, community, ecosystem, or landscape approach, or frequently an integrated and hopefully synthetic approach across scales. Our focus is on questions, not on disciplinary boundaries. Examples of recent and ongoing studies include: scaling of plant traits from leaves to ecosystems and from stands to the globe; the future boreal forest in response to fire, climate change, management, and other disturbances; interactions of biodiversity, CO2, and N on grassland ecosystems; oak ecosystems and the role of fungal mutualists, fire, and species feedbacks on soil fertility; and invasion of temperate forests by invasive earthworms and buckthorn.
Our interests are primarily in the area of terrestrial ecology and our focus tends to be on the broad ecotone of central North America, where boreal forests, northern hardwood/eastern deciduous forests, oak woodlands/savannas, and grasslands converge and mix. However, we are involved in projects that address similar themes and issues in many other biomes and geographic locations, including work in several other continents (Australia, Europe, South America).
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