Department of Biology, Duke University

Durham, NC 27708

Email: mcd7@duke.edu

PRELIM PROPOSAL:

Predicting forest structure, composition, and diversity:

A synthesis of ecological theory and data

FIGURES (PDF)

My research interests are in plant community and landscape ecology. I am interested in the competing theories that explain the maintenance of biodiversity and in empirical research to distinguish them. More specifically, I am concerned with forest dynamics from a mechanistic perspective and am very interested in spatial dynamics and scaling. Because ecological dynamics are extremely complex, my research focuses on the realistic mathematical models, computer simulations, and specialized statistics n ecessary to analyze and synthesize field research efforts. A general objective of my research is to integrate ecological theory with empirical research and applied conservation biology.

I am currently working with Sathish Govindarajan (Computer Science), Dr. James Clark (Ecology), and Dr. Pankaj Agarwal (Computer Science) on an individual based, continuous space forest stand simulator similar to the SORTIE model but which is designed to be easier to analyze, more complete demographically, and computationally faster

We are currently collecting post-treatment data on vegetation, light, water, and soils for 18 experimental forest gaps ranging in size from 20-40m diameter which were created in the spring of 2002 at the Coweeta LTER in western NC and the Duke Forest in central NC

PUBLICATIONS:

Govindarajan, S, Dietze, M, Agarwal, PK, Clark, JS. in press A Scalable Algorithm for Dispersing Population. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems

Govindarajan, S, Dietze, M, Agarwal, PK, Clark, JS. in press A Scalable Simulator for Forest Dynamics. Proc. of the 20th Annual ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry.

Clark, JS, Dietze M, Ibanez I, Mohan J. 2003. Coexistence: how to identify trophic tradeoffs. Ecology, 84:17-31.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS:

Light heterogeneity in forest gaps: the impact of damaged tree demography. ESA 2004

North Atlantic Hurricane Disturbance: Current Patterns and Climatic Phases. ESA 2003

Factors affecting leaf-level drag in trees and shrubs. Plant Biomechanics 2003

Computational methods for ecological forecasting: Spatial models and algorithms. ESA 2002

The Extinction Debt Revisited: Population Dynamics in a Point-Process Model. ESA 2001

Lotka-Volterra Award, ESA Theoretical Ecology Section - 2001

Giles-Keever Award, Duke Ecology Program - 2001

B.S. with Distinction, Duke University, 5/00 - Biology with a concentration in Ecology and a minor in Chemistry

Howard Hughes Forum – 2000

Excellence in Botany Award, Duke Botany Dept - 2000

NSF Predoctoral Fellowship – Honorable Mention, 2000

Duke University Deans List– 1997, 1998, 1999; with Distinction – 1996, 2000

I conducted a greenhouse experiment measuring growth rates, seed set, and biomass allocation in velvetleaf (Abutilon theophrasti) and cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) in competition for light and water

I incorporated rescue-effects and non-heirarchical competition into a popular spatial model of species coexistance, the competition-colonization model, and analyzed the effects this had on predicted species abundance, and diversity.

Under Bob Matlock (Organization for Tropical Studies) I worked on projects such as measuring the effects of pesticides on ant, wasp, and bird diversity in tropical agriculture, identifying the parasitic wasps of bark beetles living Cecrop ia petioles, and modeling populations of screwworm flies.

I worked a field season at Andrews LTER and Coweeta LTER(3 mo.), ran a tree-ring analysis project (9 mo.), and have been developing statistical methods to determine tree maximal growth rates as a function of diameter (DBH).

I simulated the frequency-dependant selection process involved in genetic self- incompatibility to produced an expectation for rates of synonymous vs. non-synonymous mutation

Field Course in Tropical Biology– University of Costa Rica – 6/97-8/97

GRADIENT PLOT ELEVATION MAPS