Mentor Search
Peter Weisberg
( University of Nevada, Reno )
- Institution:University of Nevada, Reno
- Departments: Natural Resources, Environmental Science
- Research Fields: Landscape Ecology, Forest Ecology, Range Ecology, Fire Ecology, Disturbance Ecology
- Disciplines: Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Conservation Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Science, Natural Resources Conservation and Research
- Location:Washoe County
- Funding:NSF - National Science Foundation, USDA - U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDI - United States Department of the Interior
Mentoring
Over the 12 years I have been on the faculty at UNR, I have actively and formally mentored high school students, undergraduates, graduate students, visiting scholars from overseas, postdoctoral fellows, and fellow faculty members. This includes 5 postdoctoral fellows and 6 visiting international scholars from China, Italy, Israel, France and Ukraine. I have mentored (as graduate committee chair and primary advisor) 14 M.S. and 5 Ph.D. students. Aside from those students for whom I have been primary advisor, I have served on over 40 graduate committees spanning at least 8 different graduate programs. I have mentored research projects of 9 undergraduate students who have obtained undergraduate research awards from NSF-EPSCoR, or UNR’s Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs. I have provided informal mentoring and research experience to numerous (> 40) undergraduates and postgraduates who have held temporary research positions in my lab, typically conducting field data collection in summer, or assisting with GIS, satellite image processing, or laboratory analysis during the academic year. I continue to collaborate with past mentees (at all levels) on publishing their research and assisting them in achieving their career goals.
Biography
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.