Christopher Gough
Virginia Commonwealth University, VA·Ecology & Evolution
Forests supply timber, fuel, food, recreation and wildlife habitat, and they store large amounts of carbon. Insects and pathogens that strip leaves and kill trees threaten these benefits.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Earth & Environmental Science
Plant Science & Agriculture
- Topics
forest carbon cycling
carbon sequestration
forest disturbance
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2027
What they work on
- Test whether trade-offs exist between different dimensions of carbon-cycling stability, such as resistance and recovery, across 0–85% defoliation levels in the FoRTE field experiment in Michigan.
- Determine how tightly forest composition, canopy structure and net primary production (carbon stored as new plant growth) are linked as forests respond to insect-like disturbance of varying severity.
- Identify how much model complexity is needed to simulate observed carbon-cycling stability across the full disturbance-response cycle, by comparing computer models against FoRTE field observations.
- Assess whether initial changes in forest growth and carbon uptake after disturbance can predict longer-term responses at timescales meaningful to forest managers.
More about the research
A forest's carbon uptake can respond in several ways after such damage. It might resist change, bounce back quickly, or shift to a new state. Knowing which happens, and why, matters for anyone predicting or managing forests.
Why it matters
Insect pests and pathogens increasingly defoliate and kill trees, putting forest carbon storage and timber at risk. The project seeks to learn whether early signs after damage can predict long-term recovery, and which forest traits support resilience. Its findings could help forest and land managers anticipate outcomes at practical timescales. They could also show what forest models need to include to predict responses to pests.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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.
Jessica Gersony
Smith College, MA·Plant Science & Agriculture
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.
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.
The school
Virginia Commonwealth University: 19 labs on PI Pages, $524M a year on research, 438 research doctorates a year.
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