We just had a new paper come out in Functional Ecology on predicting leaf temperatures and the functional traits that influence it. The paper is the outcome of fieldwork we did in 2016 in Colorado with Sabastian Escobar, Rozalia Kapas, and Sean Michaletz. It’s been a long road to get it published! You can read…

For the past week the valleys here have been hidden behind a wall of smoke, and the days have smelt like fire. The White River National Forest has been burning, and the smoke has been carried south into the Gunnison National Forest. So far nothing here has burned, and nothing probably will – but who…

New lab NSF postdoctoral research fellow Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos (center) is leading up summer efforts to measure quaking aspen drought tolerance. To do this she has to collect leaf hydraulic vulnerability curves, which involve a substantial amount of work in the lab – and the field. Here is how her process works. The work begins…

The lab has been delving into remote sensing as a way to deepen understandings of plant community dynamics. Things look different from the air than they do from the ground, and drones can cover far more ground in a day than an ecologist with a ruler. This is the second year we are now monitoring…