Sam Metzger

Community ecology • Environmental policy • Grassland ecology

I am a community ecologist working at the intersection of plants, people, places, and policy. At INSTAAR, I am assisting research on the impacts of drought and grazing in mixed-grass prairie for the Suding Lab.  This work helps inform adaptive management in Boulder County.

I will also be conducting my own analysis, leveraging drone imagery and spatial data to understand plant community dynamics under drought and grazing pressure. I will be floating between projects across sites in Wyoming and Colorado to support USDA-ARS research ecologists. These projects investigate mechanisms of plant community assembly and shifts under pressure from invasive species, droughts, nutrient deposition, grazing, and restoration efforts. We collaborate very closely with stakeholders and ranchers in the area to help ensure the integrity of the landscape we all cherish. 

I was also a part of the NASA DEVELOP Applied Sciences Capacity Building program leverages NASA Earth observations to address environmental and public policy issues through interdisciplinary research projects. Our South Dakota Ecological Conservation project uses NASA Earth Observations to understand encroachment patterns of eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) into Dakota rangelands.

Supervisor: Katharine Suding

Suding Lab

Education

• BS (Environmental Science): University of Oregon, 2024
• Associates (Environmental Science): Howard Community College, 2022