Elizabeth LaRue
University of Texas at El Paso, TX·Ecology & Evolution
Ecosystems are usually described by how many species they contain, but that is only part of the story. How plants are physically arranged, how deep and where their roots reach, and which microbes they partner with underground also shape how much carbon a forest fixes, how well soil holds onto nutrients, and how cool and habitable a landscape stays.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Earth & Environmental Science
Plant Science & Agriculture
- Topics
biodiversity-ecosystem function
belowground resource partitioning
root traits
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Test whether higher tree species richness increases belowground biodiversity and thereby promotes complementary use of water and nutrients, using North America's longest-running large-scale forest biodiversity experiment.
- Map root distributions of different tree species with belowground imaging tools including ground-penetrating radar, which uses radio waves to detect roots in soil, to determine whether mixed-species plots partition soil space more than monocultures.
- Quantify species-specific water and nitrogen uptake with isotopic tracers, and link it to root morphological traits and to mycorrhizal fungal partners identified genetically, to connect belowground complementarity with productivity and nitrogen retention.
- Test whether relationships between structural diversity (the 3D layering of plants), ecosystem function, and biodiversity hold consistently across spatial scales along a plant volume gradient spanning grasslands, shrublands, and forests.
- Assess which environmental factors mediate the spatial patterns of structural diversity-function relationships, using NEON Airborne Observation Platform remote sensing combined with new fine-scale LiDAR drone data over short-statured vegetation.
More about the research
Research here asks how both the three-dimensional structure of vegetation and the hidden structure belowground control ecosystem function, and how to measure these things directly across large areas using remote sensing and imaging rather than guessing from species counts.
Why it matters
Forest managers and restoration practitioners need to know whether planting mixed species actually improves productivity and nutrient retention, and why. Resolving the belowground mechanism could inform reforestation design and predictions of how forests respond to change. The remote-sensing work could yield a practical way to monitor the condition of grasslands, shrublands, and forests from aircraft and drones, supporting ecosystem management at regional scales.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Christine Goodale
Cornell University, NY·Ecology & Evolution
Use long-term data from four Hubbard Brook monitoring sites to quantify how tree carbon allocation above and below ground has changed with shifts in soil nitrogen and phosphorus and their uptake by plants.
Jalene LaMontagne
University of Missouri-St Louis, MO·Ecology & Evolution
Test how CO2, temperature, water availability, nitrogen deposition and wildfire interact to affect seed quantity, mass, chemistry and germination in five boreal conifers, including black spruce and jack pine.
Stefan Schnitzer
Marquette University, WI·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether lianas (woody vines) act as a keystone guild that keeps dominant tree species from crowding out weaker ones, using a large-scale liana-removal experiment in a tropical forest running since 2008.
The school
University of Texas at El Paso: 4 labs on PI Pages, $158M a year on research, 130 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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