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Research Interests My background in forest ecology and tree physiology coupled with an interest in the tropics has led me into my current work in the Luquillo Mountains of Puerto Rico. Since 1989, I have been researching the physiological and ecological basis for annual growth ring formation and other features of xylem structure in a montane rain forest tree, Cyrilla racemiflora. This work has resulted in an opportunity to examine the growth effects of hurricane defoliation, particularly that resulting from Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and Hurricane Georges in 1998. Other current work of my students on the Luquillo Experimental Forest has involved assessing lowland rain forest community changes on a U.S. Forest Service long-term growth plot continuously monitored since 1943, making it one of the oldest such in the Western hemisphere. On the same plot, we have been studying the site and climatic factors underlying variation in stem internode growth of Sierra palm (Prestoea montana), dominant in the understory of the Forest. Since 2000 I have been working with The Tropical Forestry Initiative at their reforestation site along the central Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Abandoned pasturelands are being reforested with native tropical hardwoods with much success. My students and I have been researching the ecology of tropical wet forest restoration on these degraded sites and have developed a model for ecosystem recovery. To the north, SUNY-ESF has opened a new field station in the tropical dry forest zone along the Guly of Nicoya. Here, I am engaged in an inventory of woody trees and shrubs on the 30 acre property as a basis for further research and teaching activities. Every year, as part of the Tropical Ecology course I teach at SUNY-ESF, I am involved with graduate and undergraduate students on the island of Dominica in the West Indies where students undertake small research projects at the Archbold Tropical Research and Education Center. Such activities have entailed a wide range of research from birds, insects, plants and aquatic studies to soils and agriculture. One useful project has been the development of a key to the identification of trees and shrubs of the field station. Closer to home, in New York's northern hardwood forests, I have studied the regeneration ecology of herbaceous ground flora and tree seedlings, the growth physiology of Norway spruce, species regeneration under decadent red pine stands and the effects of flooding on growth and xylem structure of northern hardwoods. Over the years, my students have researched other features of northern hardwoods' growth physiology and autecology that have included gas exchange and water relations studies of forest trees. |
