Ecosystem Science and Management

This group focuses primarily on processes that deal with the interaction between organisms and their environment across a wide range of scales ranging from global to landscape to leaf-level and within and across various media. The multi-media environment includes wetlands, air, soils, forests, and the processes explored include biogeochemistry, biosphere-atmosphere exchange, biodiversity and species richness, landscape organization, demography, among others. Field studies within this group span the tropical rainforests of Venezuela, Peru and Costa Rica, forests and wetlands in North Carolina and the Florida Everglades, the Duke Forest, long-term soil-ecosystem studies at the Calhoun Experimental Forest site in South Carolina, and spatial modeling of forest gradients in the Sierra Nevada. Moreover, a number of faculty in this group explore the canonical interactions between ecosystems and their element functions via mathematical and statistical models. Most faculty members in this concentration also participate in the University Program in Ecology (UPE). The UPE was formed in 2000 to provide a common home for students who are pursuing doctoral studies of ecology in various departments across the University, including many students in the Nicholas School and Biology.

Although students in ENV and UPE share many research interests and both student populations publish research findings in similar journals, the two graduate programs are different in their programmatic requirements and administrative structure (rather than intellectual content or available facilities). Committee members in consultation with the major professor and the graduate student set course requirements in ENV. Students in UPE are required to take a two-semester core course on the Fundamentals of Ecology. The student in consultation with his or her individual PhD advisory committee decides other coursework.

Primary Faculty
Richard Anderson
Norman L. Christensen, Jr.
James S. Clark
Patrick N. Halpin
Gabriel G. Katul
Kenneth R. Knoerr
Lynn A. Maguire
Ram Oren
Curtis J. Richardson
Daniel D. Richter
Jennifer Swenson
John Terborgh
Dean L. Urban