Visit the Suding Lab News about Katie
Plant community ecology; restoration, invasion biology, environmental change, and conservation.
I am a plant community ecologist working at the interface of ecosystem, landscape and population biology. My goal is to apply cutting-edge “usable” science to the challenges of restoration, species invasion, and environmental change. My research group and I work with a range of conservation groups, government agencies and land managers to provide evidence-based solutions that take into account biodiversity, human well-being, and management opportunities. We employ a combination of long-term monitoring, modeling and experimental approaches in settings that range from alpine tundra to oak woodlands to grasslands. Common themes include plant-soil feedbacks, functional traits, species effects on ecosystem processes, and non-linear and threshold dynamics.
Visit the Suding Lab web site. We are plant community ecologists working at the interface of ecosystem, landscape and population biology.
Education
- PhD: University of Michigan, 1999
- BS: Williams College, 1994
Awards
- Highly Cited Researcher (2016-2019), Web of Science Group, 2019
- Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2018
- MacArthur Award, Ecological Society of America, 2018
- BFA Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarly and Creative Work, Boulder Faculty Assembly, 2018
- Fellow, Ecological Society of America, 2016
Teaching
Students and postdocs
- Sam Ahler, PhD Student
- Jonathan Henn, Postdoctoral Scholar
- Thomas Merchant, PhD Student
- Melinda Stueber, Master’s Student
- Caitlin White, PhD Student
Alumni: See Suding Lab alumni.
Courses taught
- EBIO 6100: Graduate Seminar in Critical Transitions & Resilience
- It is increasingly clear that ecological systems, like many other complex systems, have critical thresholds at which they shift abruptly from one state to another--non-linear transitions that are abrupt and hard to reverse. We will explore the application of complexity theory to such issues as desertification in rangelands, dieback in coral reefs, and turbidly in lakes.
Publications