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My overall research interests are to understand how species/functional group composition and forest structure will respond to climate change and the effects of these responses on ecosystem functioning. I am particularly interested in landscape level patterns, which has led me to use remote sensing data extensively. Because I am interested in tying remote sensing interpretation to field observations, I have focused on high resolution remote sensing as a bridge between field data and coarse scale satellite data. My work has focused primarily on tropical forests, which has critical gaps in knowledge about carbon uptake and response to climate change. My research is structure around two questions that are critical for understanding responses to climate change: 1. What are the biotic and abiotic controls of spatial distributions of key landscape elements, such as species, functional groups, individual tree structure and canopy gaps? 2. What are the mechanistic relationships between these key landscape elements and ecosystem processes, such as carbon uptake? How can these be incorporated into models of ecosystem dynamics at a landscape level? A new focus of my research is tropical conservation, with a focus of applying my background and skills in ecology, modelling, remote sensing and spatial analysis to issues such as understanding historical land use patterns and their effects on current and future land use choices, developing and encouraging ecologically-sound reforestation strategies, and incorporating climate change into conservation and land use decisions. Although my research and conservation projects have been primarily conducted in Panama, I am interested in research throughout tropical ecosystems and locally in the Southeastern U.S.Degrees: Ph.D. – University of Washington, Seattle (2004)
Stephanie A. Bohlman
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