The Quantitative Ecology Lab research spans topics as diverse as forest demography, functional traits, canopy structure and change due to succession, spatial patterns and shifts of temperate and tropical forest tree species, and how climate change influences carbon stocks and fluxes in these systems. This work combines field research, advanced statistical analyses and computer simulations, and enjoys the collaboration of a global network of scientists in forest ecology, statistics, computer science and climate science.

The Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO) network of forest plots has long offered forest scientists an important way to test whether local observed patterns reflect global processes. The new, temperate forest plots extend this program to critical biomes that show high biomass, high growth and many of the spatial and temporal patterns observed in tropical forests, all with far fewer species. SERC has a keystone ForestGEO plot that demonstrates the value of temperate forest research for global understandings of terrestrial biomes.