Nat is currently the vegetation scientist on site at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (HBEF) working as a team with Tim Fahey (Cornell University), John Battles (UC Berkeley) and Jackie Matthes (Wellesley College). Quantification of the plant community’s response to the press of chronic perturbations (e.g., warming climate, air pollution, invasive pest and diseases) and the pulse of catastrophic disturbances (e.g., ice storms, floods, windstorms) allows us to understand and anticipate the consequences of these responses on the structure and function of the forest.
Since 2003, Nat’s main research focus has been at HBEF and the NSF-funded Long-term Ecosystem (LTER) project. Since 2011, she has supervised the vegetation measurements vital to making accurate biomass estimates and for understanding the trajectory of the Northern Forest. A defining aspect of the research at HBEF is the long-term nature, the quantity, and the quality of the data. She spends summers working in the woods side-by-side with the undergraduates, mostly from Cornell, but also from Wellesley and other colleges for the Research for Undergraduate projects. In addition, she leads community science and public engagement projects in collaboration with the Society for Protection of NH Forests and Hubbard brook Research Foundation.
