Program in Ecology Faculty Affiliates

PiE Affiliates provides a means for participation and collaboration with other interested individuals, both on and off campus. Affiliates can include non-tenure-track faculty at Wyoming, tenure-track faculty whose research interests overlap with ecology, and ecologists from off- campus entities who work closely with PiE faculty and students.

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Shannon Albeke

Research Scientist / Ecoinformaticist
Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center 
E-mail: salbeke@uwyo.edu
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My primary role as the Ecoinformaticist is to support ecological research efforts through the integration of geographic information science, data acquisition and management, and quantitative modeling techniques. Thus, much of my research involves the development of relational geospatial databases and the creation custom analytical tools and/or Graphical User Interfaces to facilitate efficient and accurate analyses of collected information. As a tangent of this research, I have focused on the development of spatially-explicit Individual-based Models (IBM’s) simulating animal movements within landscape networks. Primarily, I integrate VB.NET and Program R to develop each IBM, providing a flexible, customizable framework.

Ed Barbier

Professor, Economics and Finance
University of Wyoming
E-mail: ebarbier@uwyo.edu
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One of my key research interests has been advancing the economic analysis of jointly determined ecological-economic systems, which is now commonly referred to as "ecological economics". My main focus has been on developing methods to analyze and value ecosystem services, or the benefits generated by key ecological regulatory and habitat functions. I have developed such methods for analyzing the storm protection service and habit-fishery linkages of coastal wetlands. I have also conducted collaborative research with ecologists on sustainable agriculture, biodiversity, wildlife management and invasive species, mostly in tropical environments.

Gary Beauvais

Director
Wyoming Natural Diversity Database
E-mail: beauvais@uwyo.edu
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I am the Director of the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database, a service and research unit of the University of Wyoming and a member of the network of State Natural Heritage Programs. Our mission is to develop and disseminate comprehensive information on the distribution, natural history, and status of rare plants, rare animals, and important vegetation communities in Wyoming. My primary research interests are the biogeography, habitat use, and conservation of vertebrate wildlife in Wyoming and surrounding states. Most recently I have established a program of producing predictive distribution models and maps for several rare taxa in the region. Such maps have become very useful to natural resource managers and conservationists, and are good examples of how large and complicated masses of technical data can be processed into products that directly inform and influence on-ground activities. I am interested in exploring additional ways to help bridge the gap between ecological researchers and natural resource managers.

Gordon Bonan

Senior Scientist
Climate & Global Dynamics Division
National Center for Atmospheric Research
E-mail: bonan@ucar.edu
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My research examines land-atmosphere interactions, especially the ecological, hydrological, and biogeochemical processes by which terrestrial ecosystems affect climate. I study natural and human changes in land cover and ecosystems functions and their effects on climate, water resources, and biogeochemistry. I develop and use climate, hydrological, and ecosystem models to study the influence of the biosphere on climate.

Carol Brewer

Professor, Division of Biological Sciences
Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
University of Montana
Email: carol.brewer@umontana.edu
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Peter Brown

Director
Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research
E-mail: pmb@rmtrr.org
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I am the Director of Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research, a Colorado nonprofit corporation that I founded in 1997. For the past several semesters, I also have been teaching classes and seminars in fire and forest ecology, dendrochronology, and global climate change as an affiliate faculty member at Colorado State University. My main research interests revolve around how climate variation and land use affects ecosystem dynamics over seasonal to multi-centennial time scales, and how such information can be used in ecosystem management and ecological restoration. Current and recent projects involve reconstructing fire history, fire climatology, and forest dynamics in forests of the western US, the Lake States, Mexico, and Mongolia.

David Finnoff

Director, Department of Economics and Finance
University of Wyoming
Email: finnoff@uwyo.edu
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Alex Guenther

Senior Scientist
The Institute for Integrate and Multidisciplinary Earth Studies and the Atmospheric Chemistry Division National Center for Atmospheric Research
E-mail: guenther@ucar.edu
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I am interested in the chemical, physical and biological processes that control biosphere-atmosphere interactions, especially the role of surface-atmosphere trace gas exchange in ecology and atmospheric chemistry. I conduct field and greenhouse studies of the emission and uptake of Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) and other trace gases and develop large-scale models of these fluxes that can be integrated into air quality and climate models. Current projects include comparing the relative importance of VOC emissions in tropical, temperate and boreal landscapes; examining the ecological roles of plant signaling compounds and determining their impact on the atmosphere; investigating atmospheric bioaerosol production and feedbacks; and mapping plant species distributions in order to quantify their impact on trace gas and aerosol exchange.

Greg Hayward

Associate Professor of Wildlife Biology at the University of Wyoming and
Regional Wildlife Ecologist with the USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Region
E-mail: ghay@uwyo.edu
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Greg's early research focused on the ecology of birds and mammals in subalpine forests, with an emphasis on habitat relationships and population dynamics of boreal owls. He is particularly interested in forest disturbance dynamics and the consequences for vertebrates. Although he has focused on subalpine forest ecology, his research extends from seabirds in Alaska to invasive fish dynamics in Yellowstone, to implementation of the Endangered Species Act. Since 1995 he has collaborated with biologists in the Russian Far East to conserve the Amur tiger and understand prey dynamics. His "day job" with the US Forest Service, Regional Office focuses on improving methods for assessing species viability in Forest Planning and developing wildlife monitoring programs. He currently focuses a great deal of energy toward development of practical, implemental approaches to climate change adaptation for conservation.

Kristina Hufford

Assistant Professor, Ecosystem Science and Management
University of Wyoming
Email: khufford@uwyo.edu
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Robert Kelly

Professor, Atmospheric Science
Director, Earth System Science
University of Wyoming
Email: rkelly@uwyo.edu
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Besides teaching and advising in ATSC and ESS, I am involved in four research areas:

1.  Measurements of wind and turbulence at the UW Wind Energy Research Center field site, which will be located south of the UW Livestock Arena off Hwy 230.  This is the first stage of measurements to detail the inflow to experimental wind turbines which will also be located on the WERC site.

2.  Studying an abrupt land-use transition in Nebraska, using the UW King Air research aircraft and towers from NCAR/ISFS, and in collaboration with Thomas Parish, UW.  Objectives for this 2012 field work, pending funding from NSF, includes measurements of the winds and horizontal pressure gradients associated with the land-use change, and studying the day and night patterns of surface layer fluxes, temperature, humidity, and winds also associated with the change.

3.  Analysis of field measurements collected with the UW King Air and a single NCAR/ISFS tower over complex, snow-covered terrain in North Park, CO, in collaboration with Larry Mahrt, Oregon State University.

4.  Co-advising a PhD student (David Reed) in the PiE program, who is pursuing investigations of two sagebrush-dominated ecosystems, and another pine-bark beetle infested lodgepole-pine ecosystem in or near the Medicine Bow Forest.  Second advisor:  Brent Ewers, UW.

David Liberles

Assistant Professor
Department of Molecular Biology
E-mail: liberles@uwyo.edu
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As species diverge, specific molecular changes drive phenotypic changes and ultimately adaptation. Understanding the mechanism of the evolution of new functionality in genomes and how this correlates with the phenotypic divergence of species is the central theme of my research group. Important genomic events include horizontal transfer, gene duplication, sequence divergence, gene expression divergence, mRNA splicing pattern divergence, and a host of other mechanisms. We focus on detecting and collating these different events in a phylogenetic perspective, developing and applying methods, at the DNA and protein sequence levels using parsimony and maximum likelihood methodologies, at protein structural levels, and at systems network levels.

William Massman

Research Meteorologist
USDA-Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station
Email: wmassman@fs.fed.us
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I am an atmospheric scientist and forest micrometeorologist with broad interests in atmosphere-biosphere interactions. In the most general terms I investigate the physical and biological processes governing gas and energy exchange between the atmosphere, vegetation, and soils. Specifically my interests include the surface energy balance, trace gas exchange between the atmosphere and vegetated surfaces, evapotranspiration and CO2 and ozone fluxes using eddy covariance technology, winter respiration at snow-covered high elevation sites and the related CO2 transport through snowpacks and soils, heat flow and trace gas movement through soils, the long-term impact that extreme heating of soils during prescribed burns can have on the soil's physical properties and biological processes, and finally physically-based modeling of issues involving these research areas.

Jay Norton

Assistant Professor, Ecosystem Science and Management
University of Wyoming
Email: jnorton4@uwyo.edu
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Steven D. Prager

Associate Professor
Department of Geography
E-mail: sdprager@uwyo.edu
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I am a geographic information scientist with long-term interests in ecologically sustainable economic development. My current research examines networks of many sorts and the influence of geography in affecting the form and function of networked systems. Many ecological and human systems can be conceptualized as networks and the structure of such networks offers important information about their function. The better we can understand such networks, the better we can understand how and when human systems may be vulnerable to ecological changes and, conversely, how and when ecological systems may be most vulnerable to human perturbation.

Charles Preston

Senior Curator
Draper Museum of Natural History
Buffalo Bill Historical Center
Cody, Wyoming 
E-mail: cpreston@bbhc.org
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My overarching goal is to increase understanding of relationships binding humans and wildlife to improve conservation of native biodiversity.  I am actively involved in several intersecting lines of ecological inquiry and museum-based education in pursuit of this goal.  My long-standing research interests involve dissecting complex suites of environmental factors to tease apart individual and combined effects on the distribution, abundance, and behavior of vertebrates.  Diurnal raptors provide particularly attractive research models, and my current fieldwork focuses on Golden Eagles and Red-tailed Hawks in and around Yellowstone National Park.  Additionally, I have recently become engaged with questions of social ecology, i.e., how cultural values and behaviors affect biodiversity, especially in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. 

Scott R. Shaw

Professor of Entomology and Curator of the U.W. Insect Museum
Department of Ecosystem Science and Management
University of Wyoming
E-mail: braconid@uwyo.edu
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My research focuses on the systematics, ecology, and behavior of parasitoid wasps, especially the hyper-diverse insect family Braconidae (with an estimated 50,000+ species worldwide). Braconid wasps are among the most economically-beneficial of all insect groups. Their larvae feed on (and kill) the larvae of other insects, especially plant-feeding moths, beetles, and flies. The insect family Braconidae has been more successfully utilized in classical biological control programs than any other beneficial insect group. My research on Braconidae in Wyoming studies the systematics and ecology of wasp species that suppress populations of caterpillars and bark beetles in western forests. Other current research is an NSF-funded project to study the tri-trophic interactions of plants, plant-feeding caterpillars, and caterpillar-feeding wasps at the Yanayacu Research Station in Ecuador, a hyper-diverse cloud forest site on the eastern slope of the Andes.

John Tschirhart

Professor of Economics and Director of the Public Utility Research and Training Institute (PURTI) at the University of Wyoming
Department of Ecosystem Science and Management
University of Wyoming
E-mail: jtsch@uwyo.edu
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My interest is to develop models that integrate economics and ecology. If ecology is the study of the structure and function of nature (Odum, 1971), then and over time ecologists may have less and less to study. This state of affairs is supported by evidence in popular and scientific publications about the decline of natural systems, and the primary cause of decline is the increasing per-capita resource consumption of increasing numbers of Homo sapiens. Most of this consumption involves economic activity, so an important step to reversing the decline of natural systems is to understand how natural and economic systems interact. To date I have integrated economic models with general equilibrium ecosystem models of marine and terrestrial systems to examine ecosystem based management of fisheries in the Eastern Bering Sea (NMFS and EPA funded), grazing policies on western rangelands (USDA funded), invasive species and endangered species programs, estuary alga blooms induced by agricultural runoff in the Southeast (EPA supported), and the worst rodent infestation in U.S. history - a house mouse invasion in California, circa 1926. I am also on the scientific committee of DIVERSITAS, an international organization headquartered in Paris that is devoted to the study of biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services.

George Vance

Department of Ecosystem Science and Management
J.E. Warren Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment
Professor, Soil and Environmental Chemistry
University of Wyoming
Email: gfv@uwyo.edu
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My research, teaching and service activities have emphasized natural resource management and environmental sciences that have contributed to an increased understanding of ecological impacts in various environments, development of regulatory guidelines, and programs supporting disturbed ecosystem reclamation. Research projects that I have worked on include: reclamation and revegetation of disturbed and altered lands; chemistry and bioavailability of waste constituents; geographical information science for land-use planning; forest nutrient cycling processes mediated by organic residues; selenium chemistry in mineland, agriculture, and military ecosystems; acid deposition impacts on soil and aquatic organic matter chemistry; sorption of hazardous anions and organics by modified-mineral surfaces; carbon sequestration in groundwater, agricultural and forested ecosystems; ground and surface water contamination by inorganic and organic constituents; pesticide and nitrogen mobility and fate in semi-arid and irrigated environments.