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Research
I am broadly interested in the interface
between plant community and ecosystem ecology. In particular, I am interested
in how the suites of physiological and life history traits present in
a plant community affect ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling
and plant productivity. I focus on low fertility systems because these
are places where autogenic feedbacks between plant and soil processes
are likely to be the most important for community and ecosystem structure
and function. Three general categories of questions have guided research
in my lab:
1) How do plant traits at the organ and whole plant-level scale
to affect key ecosystem processes and when do these effects feedback
to alter the success of individual species?
2) How do community-level interactions modify effects of plant traits
on ecosystem processes?
3) When do changes in community composition increase the vulnerability
of an ecosystem function to catastrophic change?
Through my research, I have taken a largely experimental approach to
these questions, combining the techniques of community ecology and biogeochemistry.
I have studied these questions in fire-disturbed boreal forests in Alaska
and Siberia, in the moist acidic tundra of Alaska's North Slope, in
Hawaiian dry forests invaded by exotic grasses, and in epiphyte communities
of wet tropical forest canopies. I have described several of these projects
in detail below. Although their locations are quite different, my studies
approach a unified goal: to better understand the fundamental role of
plant traits in the nutrient dynamics of low nutrient ecosystems. I
hope that through my research I can both increase our basic understanding
of how ecosystems function, and improve our ability to predict how human-caused
change in biodiversity and resource availability will alter terrestrial
ecosystems.
- Michelle C. Mack
Projects
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