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gallington
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I explore why and how ecosystems change in response to changes in management and climate, and what this means for the future resilience of social-ecological systems. I ask questions at the boundaries of disciplines, with a focus on issues of degradation and restoration in arid rangelands. I answer these questions using tools from ecology, geography, biogeochemistry and remote sensing. I am a user of, and advocate for the importance of long-term datasets. Landscape-scale questions and models rely heavily on a knowledge of the system on the ground, from the plants to the politics. Thus, my past and current work has involved a combination of fieldwork and synthetic meta-analysis and modeling at multiple scales.
At SESYNC I am working with long-term datasets from a series of LTER sites in the southwestern US. I am developing a new framework for assessing and categorizing land cover change in arid rangelands. I will be utilizing the historical data on vegetation, soils, climate and management from these sites to validate this new methodology and to develop explanatory and predictive models.