The focus of my research is constructing and testing a model to examine the effects of plant hydraulic mechanisms on evapotranspiration (transpiration from leaves + evaporation from soil). The model is essentially a combination of the Terrestrial Regional Ecosystem Exchange Simulator (TREES) and Sperry with an algorithm to handle the coupling. TREES is used to predict evapotranspiration, photosynthesis, and carbon from environmental variables. The transpiration prediction is then inputted into Sperry to determine the plant leaf water potential and hydraulic conductivity which are critical for assessing plant water stress. Work is now underway to examine the effect of IPCC future climate prediction on the survivability of sagebrush (a semi-arid plant species found in the western United States. If you would like to learn more about this research do not hesitate to email me.

The model is coded in C++ and runs on a unix platform. SPSS used for statistical analysis.

• manual data cleaning
• field work maintaining and assembling one of the largest sapflux studies ever assembled
• geostatistical analysis of soil moisture measured at the field site
• wrote VBA macro's to more efficiently clean field data
• helped educate PhD students about C++ and the TREES framework