Montgomery Lab

MN Forests
Leaf Phenology

We have the honor and privilege to work with many collaborators including students, staff, faculty, artists, land stewards, and many others. Through field-based studies in tropical, temperate, and boreal forests, we strive to better understand plant response to environmental changes like fire and wind disturbances, warming temperatures, altered patterns of rainfall, and rising levels of CO2. We recognize that people and land have been tied together since time immemorial and the patterns and processes we study reflect and embody this interplay. Understanding the response of systems to environmental changes requires knowledge of the mechanisms through which organisms respond to the environment. Thus, we study the role of plant functional traits (e.g. photosynthesis, water loss, leaf anatomy, biomass allocation, allometry, growth, survival) in forest ecology and response to global change. We are interested in understanding how plants interact with and respond to their environments and the implications of these responses for forest dynamics, stewardship, people, biodiversity and ecosystem function. 

Research in the lab spans basic to applied, the latter focused on needs of land stewards in the Lake States, especially in Minnesota and Native Nations sharing this geography. We are also increasingly involved in community engaged scholarship in collaboration with artists and social scientists. Major current projects include:

  • the effects of global climate change on terrestrial ecosystems with projects in the boreal temperate ecotone (B4WarmED), forested peatlands (SPRUCE) and tropical rainforest (Luquillo LTER)
  • adapting forest management to climate change including participation in two Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change network (ASCC) sites (Cutfoot Experimental Forest, MN and Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, MN)
  • community engaged research and art-science collaborations (MSP LTER, Backyard Phenology)
  • all things phenological (What is phenology, you ask? It is the study of seasonal change in life cycles of plants and animals)