Philippe Vidon

Executive Director for the Division of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences

Philippe obtained his PhD in Geography from York University, ON, Canada in 2004, and subsequently occupied professor positions at Indiana University – Purdue University in Indianapolis (IUPUI) and at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry a.k.a. ESF, in Syracuse, NY. There he served as Director of the Hydrological Systems Science Council, among other leadership appointments. His most recent research has focused on a broad range of topics including (but not limited to): watershed management, water quality, soil biogeochemistry (e.g., N, P, C, Hg cycling and soil N2O, CO2, and CH4 emissions), bioenergy, and the impact of beaver dam analogues on floodplain hydrogeomorphology and landscape resiliency.

Gabrielle Boisrame

The majority of Dr. Boisrame’s research focuses on the interactions between wildfire, land cover, and water in mountain regions of the Western USA. Since 2013 she has been using a combination of fieldwork, remote sensing, and hydrological modeling to explore how managing natural wildfire in landscapes can improve water resources and forest health. Before coming to DRI, she worked as an environmental scientist for the Delta Stewardship Council, a California State Agency. In this position, she studied adaptive management strategies and calculated large-scale water budgets. Other research areas include agricultural water management, consumptive use calculations, restoration of wetlands and streams, and groundwater resource management.

Kevin Shoemaker

Broadly, I’m interested in coupling ecological data (e.g., census records, mark-recapture data, remote sensing) with simulation models, statistics and machine learning to support evidence-based conservation and wildlife management.

Paul Verburg

I am a broadly trained soil scientist with an interest in applying fundamental knowledge about soils to assess effects of natural and anthropogenic perturbations such as climate change, acid rain and land management on terrestrial ecosystems. I have worked in a variety of ecosystems including boreal forest, tallgrass prairie, Mojave deserts, and Sierra Nevada forests. In my research I use a combination of field, laboratory and modeling approaches to obtain a better mechanistic understanding of how soils and ecosystems function and respond to external stressors.

Beth Newingham

Dr. Newingham is a Research Ecologist with the USDA-Agricultural Research Service in Reno, NV, and adjunct faculty at UNR. Her research interests include plant community ecology, soil ecology, ecosystem ecology, fire ecology, restoration ecology, and climate change. She is particularly fascinated about linking plant and soil processes.

Joanna Blaszczak

I study the transformations and transport of nutrients, carbon, and contaminants through watersheds and the streams that drain them at the University of Nevada, Reno. My lab uses a combination of field (environmental sensors), lab (analytical chemistry and mesocosm experiments), and modeling (mechanistic time-series models) approaches to address the questions we are most excited about!

Markus Berli

Dr. Markus Berli’s research interests focus on modeling and measurement of soil structural dynamics affecting fluid flow and solute transport. Key issues are the connection of hydraulics and mechanics of soils at the micro-scale and upscaling physical soil behavior from pore to sample- and eventually field-scale.

Further areas of interest are: New methods for in-situ characterization of soil hydraulic and mechanical properties; improved characterization of soil pore geometry using X-ray-Micro-Tomography and pore water flow employing Neutron-Tomography; improved methods to assess and predict soil deterioration due to mechanical impacts.

His vision is that micro-scale coupling of soil hydraulics and mechanics with chemical and microbial processes will provide a conceptual framework for an improved understanding of fluid flow, contaminant fate and transport in the vadose zone, to sustain soil productivity and to secure water resources of sufficient quality and quantity world-wide.

Adrian Harpold

Dr. Adrian Harpold’s interests are in quantifying catchment and basin scale water and solute budgets and the linkages between hydrology, hydrochemistry, geomorphology, and ecology in montane forested systems. Mountain ecosystems are the major water source and carbon sink in western North America and subject to ongoing changes in climate and disturbance. Improved ecohydrological process understanding has the potential to improve local to global-scale water resource management in the 21st century.

My research program utilizes existing observation networks and new field observations to improve the ecohydrological process underpinnings of Earth systems models. My diverse interests and background has led to investigations of runoff generation mechanisms via hydrological tracers and models, as well as the partitioning of water to its various stores and fluxes. I am particularly interested in better linking the hydrological sub-disciplines of catchment and snow hydrology to improve our predictions of headwater catchment response to environmental change.

Thomas Harris

Dr. Thomas Harris is a Foundation Professor in the Department of Economics in the College of Business, has a research appointment in Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station in the College Agriculture, Biotechnology, and Natural Resources; State Extension Specialists in Community and Economic Development in the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension; and the Director of the University Center for Economic Development at the University of Nevada, Reno. Dr. Harris has been at UNR since 1981 and his primary areas of teaching, research and extension are rural economic development, economic impact modeling, and local government finance. Dr. Harris’ research covers the economic and fiscal impacts of changes in public land grazing policies and surface water reallocations. Tom was co-editor of a published book titled Targeted Regional Economic Development, and, recently, worked on the Stronger Economies Together Project covering the Western Nevada Development District.  Also Dr. Harris is a Fellow with the Western Rural Development Center.

Peter Weisberg

Dr. Weisberg is interested in the causes and consequences of landscape change, including natural disturbances, effects of anthropogenic land use, ungulate-landscape interactions, and invasive species.  His research often considers past landscape change as a guide to understanding present and future condition, and integrates field studies, GIS, remote sensing and simulation modeling.  Ongoing research projects within his lab group address disturbance ecology, woodland expansion, post-fire succession, and ecological restoration in Great Basin pinyon-juniper woodlands; fire history and ecology of mountain big sagebrush communities; fire ecology of the Sierra Nevada (Lake Tahoe Basin); and the ecology of tamarisk invasions along the Colorado River in Grand Canyon.