NSF/NOAA Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley & Carnegie Global Ecology
** I have started as an Assistant Professor at UC Santa Barbara, you can find my lab webpage here: https://anderegglab.eemb.ucsb.edu/ **
I study how human-caused climate change impacts natural systems. Humans have drastically reshaped the face of the planet (see this image of the earth at night, or this map of the world's net primary productivity appropriated by humans), and we are in the process of reshaping the climate system. How will the world's plants and animals respond as global temperatures continue to rise and global precipitation patterns shift and become more extreme? How will rising atmospheric CO2, land use change and wildfires mediate ecological responses to climate change?
I am interested in how tissue- and plant-level physiology scales up to population dynamics, ecosystem dynamics, and global water and carbon fluxes. I explore how leaf-level plant phenomena scale up using a combination of leaf level, plot level, and satellite data.
Geographic range shifts are one of the most commonly observed and predicted responses to a changing climate, and much of my work seeks to understand how climate controls plant range boundaries so that we can predict and prepare future range shifts (or help species that can't move but need to). I combine methods from community ecology, dendrochronology, and plant ecophysiology to understand the range dynamics of tree species across the western U.S.A. and Australia.
I received my PhD in Biology from the University of Washington in June 2017 (working with Dr. Janneke Hille Ris Lambers), and am currently a NSF Biological Collections and NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. Todd Dawson (UC Berkeley) and Dr. Joe Berry (Carnegie Institution for Science, Dept. of Global Ecology). I joined the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at UC Santa Barbara in 2021 as an Assistant Professor.
I study how human-caused climate change impacts natural systems. Humans have drastically reshaped the face of the planet (see this image of the earth at night, or this map of the world's net primary productivity appropriated by humans), and we are in the process of reshaping the climate system. How will the world's plants and animals respond as global temperatures continue to rise and global precipitation patterns shift and become more extreme? How will rising atmospheric CO2, land use change and wildfires mediate ecological responses to climate change?
I am interested in how tissue- and plant-level physiology scales up to population dynamics, ecosystem dynamics, and global water and carbon fluxes. I explore how leaf-level plant phenomena scale up using a combination of leaf level, plot level, and satellite data.
Geographic range shifts are one of the most commonly observed and predicted responses to a changing climate, and much of my work seeks to understand how climate controls plant range boundaries so that we can predict and prepare future range shifts (or help species that can't move but need to). I combine methods from community ecology, dendrochronology, and plant ecophysiology to understand the range dynamics of tree species across the western U.S.A. and Australia.
I received my PhD in Biology from the University of Washington in June 2017 (working with Dr. Janneke Hille Ris Lambers), and am currently a NSF Biological Collections and NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. Todd Dawson (UC Berkeley) and Dr. Joe Berry (Carnegie Institution for Science, Dept. of Global Ecology). I joined the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at UC Santa Barbara in 2021 as an Assistant Professor.
The Leaf Economic Spectrum predicts a positive relationship between leaf lifespan and leaf construction costs (LMA) based on the global relationship across species. But this relationship reverses within individual species (Anderegg et al. 2018)
My research broadly falls into four categories:
1. Exploring intraspecific trait variation in stress tolerance traits. I use within-species trait variation to determine the physiological mechanisms by which climate controls range limits. I also seek to quantify the dominant scales at which key plant functional traits vary (within an individual, between individuals within a population, between populations as a function of climate, or between species). Functional traits are a critical tool in sub-disciplines ranging from community ecology to ecophysiology to vegetation modeling, yet we know surprisingly little about trait variation within individual species. Trait variation within species can challenge foundational theories of trait integration such as the Leaf Economics Spectrum. I also use the variation of stress tolerance traits across species ranges to understand the physiological drivers that constraint the distributions of species with differing physiologies.
2. Determining where tree ranges are limited by climate vs. biotic interactions. This distinction is critical for understanding where we can apply different prediction tools (e.g. climate envelope models may work well for projecting the movement of climatically constrained but not biotically constrained range boundaries). I use a variety of methods, particularly dendrochronology, to differentiate the drivers of tree range boundaries in a variety of climates to understand where different range constraints are most prevalent.
1. Exploring intraspecific trait variation in stress tolerance traits. I use within-species trait variation to determine the physiological mechanisms by which climate controls range limits. I also seek to quantify the dominant scales at which key plant functional traits vary (within an individual, between individuals within a population, between populations as a function of climate, or between species). Functional traits are a critical tool in sub-disciplines ranging from community ecology to ecophysiology to vegetation modeling, yet we know surprisingly little about trait variation within individual species. Trait variation within species can challenge foundational theories of trait integration such as the Leaf Economics Spectrum. I also use the variation of stress tolerance traits across species ranges to understand the physiological drivers that constraint the distributions of species with differing physiologies.
2. Determining where tree ranges are limited by climate vs. biotic interactions. This distinction is critical for understanding where we can apply different prediction tools (e.g. climate envelope models may work well for projecting the movement of climatically constrained but not biotically constrained range boundaries). I use a variety of methods, particularly dendrochronology, to differentiate the drivers of tree range boundaries in a variety of climates to understand where different range constraints are most prevalent.
Tree ring chronologies from across the elevation range of ponderosa pine in SW CO. The low range margin of ponderosa is constrained by drought stress, resulting in highly synchronous growth between trees (Anderegg & HilleRisLambers 2016, 2019)
Global Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) upscaled from the relationship between NIRv and GPP at FluxNET eddy-covariance sites using a simple Bayesian model (Badgley & Anderegg et al. 2019)
3. Understanding climate-induced forest mortality and the ecological impacts of extreme drought. I study the ecohydrology and ecophysiology behind climate-induced tree die-off, as well as the consequences of canopy tree mortality for plant communities. Much of this work has focused on Sudden Aspen Decline (SAD), a regional scale forest die-off that affected trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides) across the Rockies following the 2002 drought. Recently, a similar die-offs have been sparked by droughts in 2012 and 2018, providing us with a useful (if depressing) opportunity to test the predictions we made following our work on the 2002 drought. I have also recently begun investigating California oak mortality following the 2013-2016 drought.
4. Scaling plant physiology using remote sensing. I collaborate with remote sensing experts to upscale leaf-level and plot-level measurements of photosynthesis and plant stress using satellite measurements. Recent work has included using the near IR reflectance from vegetation (NIRv) to estimate spatial patterns and uncertainties in global photosynthesis based on the extremely tight relationship between canopy structure and canopy function (Badgley et al. 2019, Global Change Biology), detecting vulnerability and resistance to prolonged drought across California forests (Brodrick et al. 2019 Geophysical Research Letters) and developing early warning metrics for aspen canopy die-off (Anderegg et al. 2019 Global Change Biology)
4. Scaling plant physiology using remote sensing. I collaborate with remote sensing experts to upscale leaf-level and plot-level measurements of photosynthesis and plant stress using satellite measurements. Recent work has included using the near IR reflectance from vegetation (NIRv) to estimate spatial patterns and uncertainties in global photosynthesis based on the extremely tight relationship between canopy structure and canopy function (Badgley et al. 2019, Global Change Biology), detecting vulnerability and resistance to prolonged drought across California forests (Brodrick et al. 2019 Geophysical Research Letters) and developing early warning metrics for aspen canopy die-off (Anderegg et al. 2019 Global Change Biology)