Katharine Suding

Katharine Suding

Professor

  • PI, Niwot Ridge LTER

Departments

Education

  • PhD: University of Michigan, 1999
  • BS: Williams College, 1994

Contact Information

(Office) 303 735-3193

Specialty

Plant community ecology; restoration, invasion biology, environmental change, and conservation.

Bio

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.

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

Research

Research Statement

Visit the Suding Lab web site. We are plant community ecologists working at the interface of ecosystem, landscape and population biology. Our goal is to apply cutting-edge science to the challenges of restoration, invasion, and environmental change.

Publications

FeaturedPublications

Yang, Y., Klein, J. A., Winkler, D. E., Peng, A. H., Lazarus, B. E., Germino, M. J., Katharine Suding, Jane G. Smith, Kueppers, L. M. 2020: Warming of alpine tundra enhances belowground production and shifts community towards resource acquisition traits. Ecosphere, 11(10): e03270. DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.3270

Komatsu, K. J., et al., including, Bill Bowman, Katharine Suding 2019: Global change effects on plant communities are magnified by time and the number of global change factors imposed. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(36): 17,867-17,873. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1819027116

Wentz, K. F., Neff, J. C., Katharine Suding 2019: Leaf temperatures mediate alpine plant communities' response to a simulated extended summer. Ecology and Evolution, 9(3): 1227-1243. DOI: 10.1002/ece3.4816

Clark, C. M., Sam Simkin, Allen, E. B., Bill Bowman, Belnap, J., Brooks, M. L., Collins, S. L., Geiser, L. H., Gilliam, F. S., Jovan, S. E., Pardo, L. H., Schulz, B. K., Stevens, C. J., Katharine Suding, Throop, H. L., Waller, D. M. 2019: Potential vulnerability of 348 herbaceous species to atmospheric deposition of nitrogen and sulfur in the United States. Nature Plants, 5(7): 697-705. DOI: 10.1038/s41477-019-0442-8

All publications by Katharine Suding >

Academics

Courses

Current Courses

  • 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.

Outreach