Radika Bhaskar

PhD Stanford 2006

Radika is an ECI interdisciplinary postdoc investigating the relationship between land use history, plant diversity, and soil fertility working with Assistant Professor Stephen Porder, who specializes in soil nutrient cycling, and Assistant Professor Erika Edwards, who studies the evolutionary patterns of plant traits. Bhaskar’s project looks at diversity from two distinct, but related, perspectives. Human development encroaching on natural systems often results in the loss of species diversity, reducing the number of species present in a region. Functional diversity, in contrast, is the range of characteristics that a plant community expresses, regardless of the number of species present.  Functional diversity is especially important for understanding the ability of natural systems to respond to changes and continue providing the ecosystem services that people have come to expect (such as clean water, fertile soil, food, and the ability to draw carbon out of the atmosphere). She is examining whether leaf characteristics, such as size, thickness, and chemical composition influence soil fertility more than species diversity does – and is also studying how past land use affects such characteristics. The work focuses on forests in, and adjacent to, the Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve, in western Mexico. The Reserve contains one of the largest areas of diverse, well-preserved tropical dry forest stands in the world and adjacent agricultural sites provide an exceptional opportunity to compare plants and soils in intact forest, regenerating forest, and active agricultural systems.

Lindsay Brin

B.A. Swarthmore College (Biology and Environmental Studies), 2005. M.A. Boston University Marine Program (Biology), 2008. “Nitrogen retention and export in experimental salt marsh plots exposed to chronic nutrient addition.”

Lindsay is interested in the biogeochemistry of coastal systems, and, specifically, the environmental and anthropogenic controls that alter estuarine biogeochemical cycles. In her research, she takes a broad ecological perspective on questions relevant to the reciprocal interaction between humans and our environment, while using a more detailed approach toward investigating the rules that define functioning of estuarine ecosystems at a very basic, chemical level. She is working on a disseration project with Jeremy Rich (CES) and Anne Giblin (MBL) that will focus on the role of temperature as a key driver of ecosystem processes along a latitudinal gradient. Lindsay will investigate how temperature regulates the magnitude and types of estuarine N cycling processes, by affecting both the rates of processes and the relative abundance of different functional groups within microbial communities.

Mengdi Cui

Mengdi is a 1st year Ph.D student in the joint Brown-MBL program and co-advised by Meredith Hastings and Jim Tang.  She is interested in biogeochemical cycles and climate change. Mengdi graduated from Peking University in 2011 with a B.A in Ecology and B.A. in Economics. For her undergraduate thesis, she worked on the response of spring vegetation green-up dates to climate change in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. She used satellite-derived NDVI to determine the green-up dates over the Plateau for over two decades. Her research emphasizes the influences of latitude and temperature on phenology in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Now she is working on greenhouse gas emission measured by eddy covariance in an agricultural system at Deerfield, Massachusetts. She is also interested in greenhouse emission and nutrient cycles in tropical agricultural ecosystem in Africa. 

Matt Heard

Ph.D. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, 2011. Matthew Heard completed his PhD in Ecology at Brown University, working with Assistant Professor Dov Sax on the topic of species invasions in local plant communities. For his ECI postdoctoral project, Heard picks up another thread of his work over the past few years – conservation medicine.  He is working with Assistant Professor Kate Smith and Professor Stephen McGarvey to apply lessons learned from the study of human infectious disease to global trends in wildlife infectious disease. Both humans and wildlife are vulnerable to diseases that spread into new geographic area or a new host species, known as emerging infectious diseases.  In humans, the emergence of such diseases is well-studied and often related to land use change or increasing population density in a region that had been sparsely populated. But researchers have little information on whether similar factors control the spread of such diseases in wildlife. Heard’s project extends work that was begun under the ECI-funded Conservation Working Group to look for the socio-economic and environmental factors that might help predict trends in wildlife disease, especially among already threatened species.

James R. Hull

James Hull is an interdisciplinary postdoc in the ECI and the Population Studies and Training Center -- working with sociologist Leah VanWey and Crystal Linkletter from Community Health and S4 to examine how the transition from a barter economy to a cash economy influences social networks, agricultural intensification, and labor mobility. Jim recently completed his dissertation in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was a predoctoral trainee at the Carolina Population Center. His dissertation, entitled Monetization: A Theory and Applications establishes a theoretical foundation for the sociological study of monetization and links the phenomenon to changes in social structure, lives, and livelihoods in the context of historically agricultural economies. His research interests also include the causes and consequences of out-migration at the place of origin, and the effects of social distance and spatial proximity on the processes of mechanization, intensification, and land use and land cover change. From 2004-2006, he participated in the National Science Foundation’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship at the Carolina Population Center, designed to foster interdisciplinary communication, collaboration, and improved research into population and environment dynamics. He has also held an interdisciplinary Weiss Urban Livability Fellowship through the Graduate School at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Heinke Jäger:

Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow 
Heinke's research seeks to better understand the ecology of ecosystems, especially on islands. While working on the conservation of threatened plant species, she became particularly interested in the anthropogenic spread of non-native species. Investigating the impacts of invasive plant species on resident floras and on nutrient cycling, as well as the impacts of invader control measures, have been a focus of her work. In addition to studying the effects of biotic interactions on plant community structure, Heinke is interested in the effect of climate on the establishment and spread of invasive plants. During her post-doc position, she is experimentally testing the mechanisms of plant species invasions in the Galápagos Islands. This includes the investigation of the role that resource competition, especially nutrients,  and species traits play in this process.

Bronwen Konecky

Bronwen is a third-year Ph.D. student with James Russell in the Department of Geological Sciences. She is interested in applying a paleoclimate perspective to understanding abrupt climate change and precipitation variability in the tropics. Her current research focuses on East African hydroclimate variability, applying organic geochemical paleoclimate proxies to sediment cores from the African rift lakes. Bronwen received a B.A. in Environmental Science in 2005 from Barnard College, Columbia University, where she studied ecological responses to tropical deglaciation in the Andes. Before coming to Brown she worked for a sustainable development initiative at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, coordinating environmental research and development activities in rural African villages.

Susanna (Suzy) Mage

Susanna (Suzy) Mage is a M.A. student in the Center For Environmental Studies working in Stephen Porder's lab. She graduated in May 2010 from the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at University of Delaware with a B.S. in Environmental Science. Her undergraduate research focused on temperate deciduous forest hydrology and biogeochemistry. Her research interests at Brown University involve terrestrial biogeochemical cycling, particularly soil fertility (P dynamics) in the tropical rainforest ecosystem of Puerto Rico. She is researching the controls of soil nutrient availability, in particular the importance of parent material, climate and topography as predictors of soil fertility.  Her other interests include environmental policy and advocacy. When Suzy is not in the lab, she enjoys cooking, traveling, and being outdoors.

John (Mac) Marston

A.B. 2001 Washington University, St. Louis (Archaeology, Classics, Biology)
M.A. 2006 University of California, Los Angeles (Archaeology)
Ph.D. 2010 University of California, Los Angeles (Archaeology)

Mac Marston is an interdisciplinary environmental archaeologist whose research focuses on agricultural risk management and sustainability in the ancient world. As a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Mac teaches courses in environmental archaeology and the archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean while conducting research in Turkey, Egypt, and Uzbekistan. Using plant and animal remains from archaeological sites, regional paleoenvironmental data, and modern plant ecology, Mac aims to reconstruct ancient agricultural systems and to trace environmental degradation as a result of human activities over long spans of time. He directs the Kerkenes Ecology and Environmental Archaeology Project in central Turkey, which is partially funded by a CAORC Multi-Country Research Fellowship. Mac's earlier work in Albania and at the site of Gordion, also in central Turkey, was funded by a Graduate Research Fellowship and Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation, and results of these projects have appeared in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Iliria, and several excavation monographs and conference proceedings volumes.

Chelsea Nagy

B. Phil. Environmental Science, Miami University, 2005
M.S. Forestry, Auburn University, 2009

Chelsea Nagy is a Ph.D. student in the Brown-MBL program and she is advised by Assistant Professor Stephen Porder (Brown-EEB) and Senior Scientist and Brown-MBL Program Director Chris Neill (MBL). Her research focuses on the effects of land use change on the structure and function of two prominent forest types: riparian forests and regrowing secondary forests. Conversion of transitional forests in the Brazilian Amazon for soy production may be degrading riparian forests left as mandated by Brazilian law. These riparian zones are influenced by the edge effects commonly associated with forest fragments (e.g. altered microclimate, changes in species composition, increased tree mortality) as well as altered
hydrology due to the removal of forest within the watershed. Secondary forests make up an increasing proportion of forested land throughout the tropics. In the Atlantic Forest of Brazil, secondary forests are expanding through abandonment of former agricultural land and targeted restoration projects. However, the trajectory of secondary forest regrowth depends
on the land use history. She will study how nutrient limitation and productivity differ among secondary forests on land formerly used for pasture and Eucalyptus plantations and how these compare with primary forests in the region.

Shelby Riskin

Shelby Riskin is interested in the interaction of biogeochemical cycling, ecosystem functioning, and anthropogenic land use changes. For her undergraduate research in rural Iowa - an area that has seen some of the most rapid and complete land use change in the world - she looked at nutrient loading in stream and lake systems. She has also worked in Brazil, a region under immense development pressure, for Chris Neill of MBL, who was looking at nutrients and hydrologic flowpaths in small streams, comparing catchments in tropical forest and pasture.  Most recently, she conducted sampling of impaired waterbodies in Minnesota and working on hazardous material clean ups as a consultant. Her PhD advisor is Stephen Porder and her dissertation work will focus on the effects of forest and pasture conversion to intensive soybean agriculture in Brazil. 

Stephanie Spera

Stephanie graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2011 with a B.A. in Earth and Planetary Science and love of and interest in writing and communication. As a research assistant in Wash. U.'s Remote Sensing Lab, she realized how versatile and applicable remote sensing tools were to studying all facets of the earth. While studying abroad at the University of Canterbury in 2010, she designed a research project in which she was able to apply both her geology background and interest in science communication. Her research on the volcanic hazards associated with an eruption at Mount Ngauruhoe emphasized the importance of communication between scientists, politicians, and the general population: a theme she hopes to expand upon in her research. Stephanie is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geological Sciences working with Jack Mustard. She is interested in quantifying and understanding the drivers behind land-use and land-cover change. This topic is especially pertinent as the world addresses issues of growing population size and food security. Her current research is focussed on large-scale land-use/land-cover change in Mato Grosso, Brazil. 

Erika Sudderth

PhD Harvard University (2007), BA UC San Diego (1999)

Erika Sudderth is a post-doctoral research associate in the Schmitt Lab at Brown University. Her research is focused on understanding how global change influences soil, plant, and ecosystem processes. To predict responses of a particular ecosystem to global change scenarios we must understand complex ecological processes, including 1) the genetic and physiological mechanisms that control environmental responses and species distributions, and 2) the effects of environmental factors on plant interactions with competitors, microbes, and animals. Her research program addresses specific questions within this general framework, with an emphasis on linking plant physiological responses to effects on species interactions, plant communities, and ecosystem function.

Jaime Toney

Jaime is a Ph.D. student in the department of Geological Sciences. Her research focuses on using lake sediments to answer questions concerning continental climate change. She works with Geology Professor Dr. Yongsong Huang to develop and utilize new organic geochemical proxies for climate research. Her primary research project is a collaboration with Dr. Sherilyn Fritz (University of Nebraska) to understand the links between drought in the Northern Great Plains and past global climate drivers, such as SST changes in the Tropical Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Satrio A. Wicaksono

Satrio “Io” Wicaksono is a PhD student in the Geological Sciences Department; working with Dr. James Russell. Hailing from Jakarta, Indonesia, at Brown he gets a chance to study Indonesian past climates. He uses various proxies recovered from Sulawesi lake sediments to develop high-resolution late Quaternary climate and hydrological records. Io is interested in understanding the fundamentals of climate-related systems in the tropics such as the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), especially in relation to abrupt climate changes in the past. Io received his BA from Wesleyan University in 2010. His interest in the intersection of climate sciences, environmental policy and development studies had led him to double major in Earth and Environmental Sciences and Environmental Studies and also obtain the Certificate in International Relations at Wesleyan. In addition to geological research, some of his past research has also focused on Indonesia’s recent forest policies and the feasibility of implementing REDD (Reduced Emission from Deforestation and Degradation) mechanisms in Indonesia.

Xi Yang

I am interested in the interdisciplinary research of remote sensing, terrestrial ecosystem ecology and climate change. My research interests focus on understanding the environmental factors that driving vegetation phenology, the impact of changing phenology on ecosystem functioning and the seasonality of leaf traits using a combination of field work and remote sensing technique. Specifically, I used remote sensing and phenology models at regional scale to monitor and predict the change in vegetation phenology. I also designed Standalone Phenology Observation System (SPOS) to monitor vegetation phenology on the island of Martha's Vineyard, MA. I used spectroscopy to understand the relationship between leaf traits and leaf spectroscopic properties.

Recent ECI Associates

Steve Goldsmith

Steve is a biogeochemist who is investigating the role of geologic processes (silicate weathering and organic carbon burial) on the global carbon cycle. While much of his research has focused on the determination of long-term climate controls, the advent of global climate change has added a particular modern-day relevancy. He is currently involved in a pan-tropics study focusing on phosphorus availability in soils in regions undergoing varying rates of uplift. The goal of this study is to determine whether erosion rates play a primary role on soil development over time.

Steve graduated from the Ohio State University in the summer of 2009 with a Ph.D. in geology.  His dissertation work consisted of the determination of the relationship of physical and chemical weathering rates, chemical weathering and particulate organic fluxes delivered during aperiodic intense storm events (i.e. typhoons), and the silicate weathering and CO2 consumption potential of andesitic terrains.  Prior to joining Stephen Porder' lab, he taught for one year at his alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan University, a liberal arts school in Delaware, O.H.

Sheila Walsh

B.S. Biological Sciences, Stanford University, 2002
Ph.D. Marine Biology, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California-San Diego, 2009. Thesis: “Linking Coral Reef Health and Human Welfare.”

Sheila Walsh creatively combines ecology, economics, and policy to evaluate problems of marine ecosystem management. Her research investigates how humans affect ecosystem function and services and how these changes feedback to affect human behavior and welfare. Specific research topics include multiple stressors on marine ecosystems, effects of fishing across scales, market-based and cooperative mechanisms for marine management, and dynamics of coupled human and nature systems (CHANS). Sheila has conducted and is funding research in Kiribati, Mexico, and New England. Her research has appeared in the Journal of Marine Biology, PLoS ONE, Coral Reefs, and Global Change Biology as well as NPR, Ocean Conservancy Magazine, and Change.org. As a former CHANS Fellow, Sheila is also interested in the training and development of interdisciplinary researchers and is currently leading a collaborative project on this topic. Currently, Sheila is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (EEB) and Economics at the Environmental Change Initiative (ECI). At ECI, she is working with Heather Leslie (EEB) and Sriniketh Nagavarapu (Economics) on how ecological, economic, and governance contexts influence the effectiveness of marine policy tools in Mexico. Sheila received her Ph.D. from the interdisciplinary program in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California-San Diego (2009) and her B.S. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University (2002).

Lara Reichmann

Lara Reichmann works on an experiment located in the Chihuahuan Desert, as part of the Jornada Basin Long term Ecological Research Site (LTER). By independently manipulating precipitation and nitrogen inputs, researchers are able to tease out controls on patterns of plant productivity. Lara works with Osvaldo Sala at Brown University and Debra Peters at New Mexico State University.

Keryn Bromberg Gedan

B.A. Tufts University (Biology and Environmental Studies), 2002.
"Effects of nitrogen availability on young gypsy moth larvae."

I am interested in the response of New England salt marshes to anthropogenic perturbations. New England salt marshes, like salt marshes in many other regions in the world, have a long history of human use and exploitation, including farming of salt hay, use as natural pasture, drainage for conversion to freshwater agriculture, filling to create upland space, and ditching for mosquito control. I am interested in the consequences of this history of human interaction for salt marsh species distributions, ecosystem processes, and ecological services. Remaining salt marshes in New England continue to provide crucial ecosystem services, as storm buffers, water filtration systems, nitrogen exporters, and carbon sinks. I am particularly interested in how global anthropogenic impacts, such as climate change and eutrophication will affect salt marsh ecosystems and the services they provide.

Joaquin Chaves

Joaquin Chaves is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Stephen Porder. He is working on a project examining the relationship between soil age, erosion rates, and soil fertility in tropical soils. The research takes a hard look at the common generalization that unglaciated tropical soils are old, and therefore low in phosphorous.  The project involves field sites in lowland forests of Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Costa Rica.

Regan Early

PhD, 2007, University of York, UK. "Conservation at the Landscape scale, the Marsh Fritillary and other British Butterflies"
BA, 2002, Oxford University, UK.

My research concerns species range contractions and expansions; the mechanisms which drive them and their implications for conservation planning. I am interested in deriving principles from in depth studies and applying them to large-scale multi-species problems. I work with several environmental organizations to develop practical conservation plans which are scientifically informed. Currently I am working on the ecological and evolutionary processes by which species respond to climate change. I work in the Sax lab (http://www.brown.edu/Research/Sax_Research_Lab/).

Pedro Flombaum

B.S. Biology, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1997
PhD Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, 2008

Working in Osvaldo Sala's research group, Pedro Flombaum studied the effects of plant species diversity on ecosystem functioning. Using manipulative experiments in the Patagonian steppe, he found that primary production was positively associated with the diversity of plant species. In fact, the biodiversity effect in this natural ecosystem was much larger than previously reported for artificial ecosystems. His research suggests that the loss of natural biodiversity may have larger consequences for ecosystem functioning than previously thought. Pedro is now a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California Irvine.

Gillian Galford

Gillian Galford is a Ph.D. student in the Brown-MBL graduate program. Her thesis addresses the impacts of land-cover and land-use change on carbon and nitrogen cycling, particularly the emission of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide greenhouse gases, in the Brazilian Amazon.  She works with Brown Professor of Geological Sciences John Mustard and MBL Ecosystems Center Co-director Jerry Melillo. This collaboration represents a fusing of research expertise across the two institutions as Gillian integrates tools of remote sensing and biogeochemical modeling. This work is supported by a NASA Earth And Space Science Fellowship Program and through collaboration with colleagues at the University of Sao Paulo under the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA). In Fall 2009, Gillian begins a postdoctoral position with the Earth Institute at Columbia University

Karen Holmberg

A postdoctoral fellow in archaeology, Karen's research interests center upon highly interdisciplinary ways to ‘think’ volcanoes as emblematic examples of the long-term intersection between human life and changeable environments. She is particularly interested in the very dynamic ways that culture encapsulates mutable natures in narratives.

Her doctoral research at Columbia University focused upon fieldwork conducted in western Panamá, where she incorporated traditional archaeological field survey and artifact analysis, ethnography, ethnohistory, and petrographic analysis of tephra from archaeological stratigraphy and lake-sediment cores. She explored new ways to examine rock art and volcanic materials used in grave construction and used a GIS to integrate satellite imagery and the deceptive precision of GPS points with less easily georeferenced data from historical maps, hearsay, rumor, and descriptions of looted site locations.

Current research projects explore conceptions of material culture and material nature and how we view and value them. I am examining the importance of William Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei (1776) and Alexander von Humboldt’s 1799-1804 New World travels in modern scientific conceptions of volcanism. In a separate project I am querying the social value we give to landscapes and have recently completed trips to the Antarctic Peninsula and Amazonia to examine these issues through the lens of ecotourism and heritage. In future projects I intend to examine the parallels and overlaps in the ways that the lived experience of volcanic regions intersects with that of glacial regions as well as ways that geological conceptions are incorporated into contemporary art and literature.

My past fieldwork experiences have been in Athens, Belize, El Salvador, Papua New Guinea, and both prehistoric and historic sites in Virginia. I will be teaching two courses in 2009-2010: ‘The Nature and Culture of Disaster’ and ‘Archaeology under the Volcano’. I will also be planning a colloquium for December 2009, Terra Mobilis: Fire and Ice.

Lindsay McAlpine

Lindsay McAlpine is an undergraduate concentrator in Environmental Science with a focus in Ecosystems and Design. Her senior thesis research with Stephen Porder looks at the impact of garlic mustard, an invasive species, and the efforts to control its spread in the Berkshire Hills region. She is examining the effectiveness and economic efficiency of the Nature Conservancy's efforts to control garlic mustard using herbicides.

Véronique St-Louis

Véronique joins ECI as an interdisciplinary postdoctoral scientist, working with Dov Sax and Jack Mustard. Her research lies at the intersection of landscape ecology, remote sensing, and statistics. Understanding the factors that limit the spatial distribution of species across a range of spatial scales and ecosystem types has always been at the center of her work. Her research at Brown is focused on the response of plant species to future changes in climatic conditions in the Eastern US. Specifically, Véronique is interested in understanding how ecological as well as human-induced factors (e.g., land use and land cover change) will interact to affect a given species’ ability to cope with future changes in climatic conditions, and how these factors will affect the species’ risk of extinction.  She received her Ph.D. Forest Ecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009 as well as an MS in Biometry from University of Wisconsin-Madison, in 2009 and an MS in Biological Sciences from Université de Montréal in 2000.

Jessica Tierney

As a paleoclimatologist, I believe that to better understand the future, one must look to the past. My research focuses on tropical paleoclimate, with an emphasis on understanding how the hydrologic cycle in the tropics has changed through time. I am interested in investigating tropical climate throughout geologic history, though my current work focuses on climatic variability over suborbital to multidecadal timescales during the Pleistocene and Holocene. I utilize both terrestrial and oceanic archives to reconstruct a variety of parameters such as rainfall, surface temperature, productivity and oxygenation history. I am particularly interested in the application of organic ‘biomarkers’ - the molecular remains of algae and higher plants - towards paleoclimatic purpose. Specifically, I use the stable isotope composition of such biomarkers to track changes in ecosystem carbon cycling (d13C) and the hydrologic cycle (dD).

Juliet Simpson

My fundamental research interests lie in the interactions between humans and aquatic systems. I work primarily with plants and algae in wetlands, streams, and lakes, studying their responses to human perturbations such as nutrient enrichment, habitat alteration, and introduction of invasive species. Some of my past research has focused on:

• impacts of the invasive reed Phragmites australis on native salt marsh plants in New England;
• the cascading influence of nitrogen enrichment on plant communities in coastal wetlands in California;
• the physical, chemical, and biological changes generated in streams by urbanization;
• regulation and preservation of water quality in streams and rivers in central and southern California, where the needs of agriculture, native ecology, and rapidly growing human populations are increasingly coming into conflict over limited supplies of fresh water.

Amity Wilczek

Ph.D. Harvard University, 2004. Thesis title: "The Roles of Life History and Environmental Heterogeneity in the Evolution of Maternal Effects in Plants."

Amity's research interests lie in how plants integrate complex clues and signals into an environmentally appropriate response. For plants that occupy a wide range of habitats, what consitutes an appropriate response to a given environmental cue in one habitat may not be adaptive in another. My current research seeks to elucidate how geographic variation in selection pressures shapes plant response through a combination of phenotypic and genetic analyses.