Midwestern forests are a “hot spot” for nitrogen deposition - a pervasive, and perhaps irreparable, anthropogenic global change phenomena. Could this be driving declines in oak regeneration across Chicagoland?
We are using DNA data to further understand the reproductive biology of an under-studied oak, Quercus havardii, which will help inform seed collection strategies and collection management.
Invasive Amynthas worms are invading otherwise earthworm-free soils of the northern US. This project evaluates the impacts they’ll have on forest soils and seedlings.
Trees are removed from the Living Collections for various reasons, but just because a tree is no longer growing on the grounds, doesn’t mean we can’t still learn from it.
We are developing new approaches to combine multiple sources of information about how species’ ranges shifted after the last Ice Age, 20,000 years ago, and we are using Fraxinus as a case study.