Ecohydrology
Group
Department
of Geography
& Department of Environment and
Sustainability
Welcome!
My name is D. Scott Mackay and I am a
Professor of Ecohydrology at the
University at Buffalo (SUNY). My
research interests are in plant
responses to environmental stress and
the role of plants in water cycling,
which I study using plant hydraulics,
biophysical modeling, and Bayesian
analysis. I examine how drought, heat,
and biotic disturbances combine to
threaten forests, crops, and the
security of plant-based food, fiber,
and energy production. I take a systems
approach, build biophysical
process-based
models, and synthesize data from
sensors, biometric measurements, and
genomics. Collectively, these
approaches help us reveal emergent
plant traits, water and carbon
cycling dynamics, and plant-microbe
associations. Please read
on to learn more about my research
projects and the published findings
from this work.
Heat,
Drought, and Tree Mortality
Healthy
forests are carbon sinks, but
when trees die they become
carbon sources. Forests also
transpire a large fraction of
the global average
precipitation falling on land
areas, and so their demise
alters the land-atmosphere
energy balance. Published
results from this project are:
Scientists
have long wanted to be able to peer
into the subsurface to see how root
processes interact with other
processes occurring below ground. We
developed a novel
modeling approach that provides a
"lens" for seeing below the
surface. We ask, how does root
growth prior to and during drought
allow trees to adjust their water
uptake depths and sustain their
access to reliable water sources? Here you can read
more about these findings:
Subsurface
hydrology has received less
attention compared to above
ground processes for predicting
the physiological responses of
plants to drought. Our
work fills this gap by
considering the integrated
systems of plant hydraulics and
groundwater hydrology. The following
publications provide a deeper
look at the findings from this
project:
Biotic
disturbances are an
integral part of ecosystem
responses to environmental
dynamics, but the full
extent of their effects on
integrated systems is only
partly known. A major
finding of this work is
that some ecosystems are
resilient to biotic
disturbance because of
hydrologic refugia while
others are capable of
rapid recovery from even
the most extreme biotic
epidemics. More details
are available in the
following publications:
Plant
traits interact with
environmental conditions
to affect plant growth and
productivity. By examining
these interactions using
crop species and
biophysical process-based
models, and manipulating both plant traits and their
environment, we
are able to gain a deeper
understanding of
mechanisms. This provides
a robust hypothesis
testing framework to study
traits that are
transferable to natural
settings and novel
environmental conditions.
Here you
can read about these
findings:
We ask
how species, plant age,
disturbance, and spatial
gradients associated
with edaphic,
topographic, and
micrometeorologic
dynamics affect
evapotranspiration. We
show that
evapotranspiration
must consider hidden
sources of water in
forested wetlands,
which are hard to
distinguish from
upland forests when
using remote sensing.
We also show that
spatial dynamics tree
transpiration can be
explained by dynamics
of vapor pressure
deficit, and that
significant
variability in
stomatal conductance
in forests is
attributed to spatial
dynamics of
competition for light.
More details are found
in the following
publications:
