Martin DovciakAssociate Professor

459 Illick Hall
1 Forestry Drive
Syracuse, NY 13210

315-470-6743 | 315-470-6749
mdovciak@esf.edu

Research Interests: Plant Ecology, Forest Ecosystems, Global Environmental Change, Biodiversity, Ecosystem Management and Restoration.

CV and Lab Homepage

Selected Courses Taught:

• Plant Ecology & Global Change
• Flowering Plants: Diversity, Evolution & Systematics
• Tropical Ecology (Co-taught)   
• Impacts of Deer on Forests Seminar (Co-taught)
• Natural Resource Management

Examples of Recent Grant Awards:

• National Science Foundation; $293,033; 2023-2025. “Data Science for Global Change -- Does Plant Diversity Imply Forest Resilience?” M. Dovciak (PI).
• National Science Foundation; $322,992; 2018-2023. “Linking Forest Regeneration, Plant Distributions, and Ecotone Dynamics in Changing Mountain Environments”. M. Dovciak (PI).
• USDA McIntire-Stennis Program; $61,784; 2018-2021. "Recent Changes and Future Trajectories of an Ecosystem at the Crossroads: Implications for Planning, Management, and Conservation of Long Island Pine Barrens". M. Dovciak (PI), T. Green, K. Schwager.
• New York State Department of Environmental Conservation; $312,213; 2013-2018. “Evaluating Deer Impacts on Forests of New York State”. M. Dovciak (PI), J. Frair, J. Hurst, P. Curtis, P. Smallidge.
• NYSERDA; $200,000; 2015-2017. “Effects of Acidic Deposition and Soil Acidification on Forest Understory Plant Biodiversity in the Adirondack Mountains”. T. Sullivan (PI), M. Dovciak, G. Lawrence, T. McDonnell ($87,001 to M. Dovciak).

Selected Publications (* undergraduate, ** graduate, or *** postdoctoral mentee; Additional publications are here):

• Tourville J**, Wason J, Dovciak M (2022) Canopy gaps facilitate upslope shifts in montane conifers but not in temperate deciduous trees in the Northeastern United States. Journal of Ecology, doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13993.
• Woodbridge M**, Dovciak M (2022) Logging legacies in a plant biodiversity hotspot: Altered distribution and abundance patterns of the shrub layer in the southern Appalachians. Forest Ecology and Management 516:120245.
• Hecking M**, Zukswert JM **, Drake JE, Dovciak M, Burton JI (2022) Montane temperate-boreal forests retain the leaf economic spectrum despite intraspecific variability. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change 4:754063.
• Beeles KL *, Tourville JC **, Dovciak M (2022) Characterizing canopy openness across large forested landscapes using spherical densiometer and smartphone hemispherical photography. Journal of Forestry 120: 37-50.
• Wason J, Battles J, Berdugo MB **, Casson P, Tourville J **, Dovciak M (2021) Sentinel research sites in global change research: Whiteface Mountain, New York. Northeastern Naturalist 28: 47–63.
• Russavage E *, Thiele J *, Lumbsden-Pinto J **, Schwager K, Green T, Dovciak M (2021) Characterizing canopy openness in open forests: Spherical densiometer and canopy photography are equivalent but less sensitive than direct measurements of solar radiation. Journal of Forestry 119: 130–140.
• Langdon SF**, Dovciak M, Leopold DJ (2020) Tree encroachment varies by plant community in a large boreal peatland complex in the boreal-temperate ecotone of northeastern USA. Wetlands 40: 2499–2511.
• Wason JW**, Beier CM, Battles JJ, Dovciak M (2019) Acidic deposition and climate warming as drivers of tree growth in high-elevation spruce-fir forests of the Northeastern US. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change 2: 63, doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2019.00063.
• Lesser MR***, Dovciak M, Wheat R, Curtis C, Smallidge P, Hurst J, Kramer D, Roberts M**, Frair J (2019) Modelling white-tailed deer impacts on forest regeneration to inform deer management options at landscape scales. Forest Ecology and Management 448: 395–408.
• Berdugo MB**, Dovciak M (2019) Bryophytes in fir waves: Forest canopy indicator species and functional diversity decline in canopy gaps. Journal of Vegetation Science, 30: 235–246.
• Zarfos MR**, Dovciak M, Lawrence GB, McDonnell TC, Sullivan TJ (2019) Plant richness and composition in hardwood forest understories vary along an acidic deposition and soil-chemical gradient in northeastern United States. Plant and Soil 438: 461–477.
• Berdugo MB**, Quant JM**, Wason JW**, Dovciak M (2018) Latitudinal patterns and environmental drivers of moss layer cover in extratropical forests. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 27: 1213–1224.
• Wason JW**, Dovciak M (2017) Tree demography suggests multiple directions and drivers for species range shifts in mountains of Northeastern United States. Global Change Biology, 23: 3335–3347.
• Wason JW**, Bevilacqua E, Dovciak M (2017) Climates on the move: Implications of climate warming for species distributions in mountains of the northeastern United States. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 246: 272–280.
• Alvarez-Yepiz JC**, Burquez A, Martinez-Yrizar A, Teece M, Yepez EA, Dovciak M (2017) Resource partitioning by evergreen and deciduous species in a tropical dry forest. Oecologia 183: 607–618.
• Jaloviar P, Saniga M, Kucbel S, Pittner J, Vencurik J, Dovciak M (2017). Seven decades of change in a European old-growth forest following a stand-replacing wind disturbance: A long-term case study. Forest Ecology and Management 399: 197–205.
• Dovciak M, Hrivnak R, Ujhazy K, Gomory D (2015) Patterns of grassland invasions by trees: insights from demographic and genetic spatial analyses. Journal of Plant Ecology 8: 468–479.
• Alvarez-Yepiz JC**, Dovciak M (2015) Enhancing ecosystem function through conservation: threatened plants increase local carbon storage in tropical dry forests. Tropical Conservation Science 8: 999–1008.
• Dovciak M, Brown J* (2014) Secondary edge effects in regenerating forest landscapes: vegetation and microclimate patterns and their implications for management and conservation. New Forests 45: 733–744.
• Frelich LE, Peterson RO, Dovciak M, Reich PB, Vucetich JA, Eisenhauer N (2012) Trophic cascades, invasive species, and body-size hierarchies interactively modulate climate change responses of ecotonal temperate-boreal forest. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 367: 2955–2961.
• Halpern CB, Halaj J, Evans SA, Dovciak M (2012) Level and pattern of overstory retention interact to shape long-term responses of understories to timber harvest. Ecological Applications 22: 2049–2064.
• Dovciak M, Halpern CB (2010) Positive diversity-stability relationships in forest herb populations during four decades of community assembly. Ecology Letters 13: 1300–1309.
• Dovciak M, Frelich LE, Reich PB (2005) Pathways in old-field succession to white pine: seed rain, shade, and climate effects. Ecological Monographs 75: 363–378.
• Dovciak M, Frelich LE, Reich PB (2001) Discordance in spatial patterns of white pine (Pinus strobus) size-classes in a patchy near-boreal forest. Journal of Ecology 89: 280–291.