Jessica Gersony
Smith College, MA·Plant Science & Agriculture
Droughts are expected to become stronger and more frequent. Forests absorb more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide people emit each year, so how trees cope with dry conditions matters for predicting future climate.
- Fields
Plant Science & Agriculture
Ecology & Evolution
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
drought
phloem
sugar transport
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Quantify phloem function, the tree's sugar-transport system, in mature forest trees under control and drought conditions, using a forest rainfall-manipulation experiment and Raman spectroscopy to visualize sugars in plant tissue.
- Determine when the phloem loses function relative to the decline of photosynthesis during drought, by measuring the rate at which carbon moves through the phloem alongside other physiological methods.
- Test how loss of phloem function relates to tree death, using controlled mortality experiments on saplings of northeastern U.S. tree species in controlled environments.
- Measure variation in turgor loss point, the leaf water stress at which cells wilt, plus osmotic potential and rooting depth, across species and sites from the northeastern U.S. to a southern-range site in Alabama.
- Identify how drought resilience relates to cold and spring-frost resilience in the same individuals, including a manipulative experiment on genetically identical trees, and use the results to improve a forest ecosystem model.
More about the research
This research asks how trees in the northeastern United States respond to drought, and what their drought strategies mean for survival and for resistance to other stresses such as extreme cold. One project looks inside the tree at sugar transport; the other measures water-stress traits across many species and sites to improve forest models used by managers.
Why it matters
Forest managers in the northeastern U.S. are planning for more mid-summer droughts and for assisted tree migration, but lack data on how local species handle drought and cold. This work could improve the forest simulation models managers use to compare strategies, and sharpen predictions of how much carbon dioxide forests will keep absorbing as droughts intensify.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Nathan McDowell
Washington State University, WA·Ecology & Evolution
Identify the mechanisms behind differences among tree species in how rising vapor pressure deficit (VPD), or air dryness, affects gas exchange, growth, mortality, and ecosystem carbon and water fluxes, using seedling experiments and global tree growth datasets.
Paulo Brando
Yale University, CT·Ecology & Evolution
Extend a 21-year record of tree growth, mortality, biomass, canopy cover, soil moisture and forest–atmosphere carbon and water exchange at Tanguro, Brazil, to 27 years, to track recovery after repeated fire, drought and windthrow.
Craig Brodersen
Yale University, CT·Plant Science & Agriculture
Measure guard cell and epidermal cell turgor pressure directly in living leaves, using a laser-induced gas bubble whose collapse rate reveals the pressure inside the cell.
The school
Smith College: 4 labs on PI Pages, $7M a year on research, 5 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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