Research

Plant communities are complex—and often messy—records of environmental conditions and past disturbances etched into the landscape. My research deciphers these patterns, combining traditional statistical methods and modern computational approaches with targeted field observations and large vegetation datasets to uncover the key drivers of plant community structure and composition across Western North American drylands, with a special emphasis on big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) ecosystems. 

My work explores how soils translate climate into vegetation in drylands, from individual plants to landscape scales both directly—by favoring plants with rooting distributions that match the depth distribution of soil water—and indirectly—by modifying the nature of plant-plant interactions under different conditions. By deepening our understanding of dryland plant community dynamics, my work provides a foundation for improving land management strategies, predicting response to disturbance, and advancing ecological theory in a changing world. 

Image created by DALL-E (2024).

Big sagebrush with a stunning complement of grasses and forbs in the Lemhi Valley near  Leadore, Idaho.