Troy Ocheltree
Colorado State University-Fort Collins, CO·Plant Science & Agriculture
Grasses cover about half of Earth's land surface and include more than 11,000 species. They feed livestock, trap carbon, clean water and provide habitat for pollinators.
- Fields
Plant Science & Agriculture
Ecology & Evolution
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
grasses
Poaceae
drought tolerance
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2029
What they work on
- Identify the networks of linked physiological traits that produce different drought-coping strategies in grasses, using a set of species that spans the entire grass family (Poaceae).
- Determine how embolism, the air-bubble blockage of a plant's water-transport tissue during drought, forms in grass leaves, using new techniques that observe processes inside the leaf.
- Improve the accuracy of species distribution models for grasses by adding trait networks and growth phenology (the season when each species grows) in place of annual climate summaries.
- Test whether drought-related traits evolve independently or together across the grass family, using an experimental design that spans the grass phylogeny.
More about the research
But species differ in when during the year they grow (their phenology), how fast they grow, and how well they survive drought. These traits often trade off against each other. Species that grow only in spring may tolerate drought poorly, and summer growers tend to grow slowly. As rising temperatures and shifting rainfall reduce the water available to plants, some grasses may no longer thrive where they live now. Most studies of these traits have focused on trees, so grasses remain poorly understood.
Why it matters
Better predictions of where grass species can persist as droughts and seasonal weather change could help land managers keep grasslands resilient. The work could also help restoration projects choose seed mixes suited to future conditions. That matters for the pollinator habitat, water quality, carbon storage and livestock forage that grasslands provide.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jacob Suissa
University of Tennessee-Knoxville, TN·Ecology & Evolution
Test the Drought-Driven Hypothesis by measuring how vulnerable fern leaves, rhizomes and roots are to drought-induced embolism, the air blockages in water-conducting tubes, and linking this to vascular anatomy at architectural, tissue and cellular scales.
Nathan McDowell
Washington State University, WA·Ecology & Evolution
Identify the mechanisms behind differences among tree species in how rising vapor pressure deficit (VPD), or air dryness, affects gas exchange, growth, mortality, and ecosystem carbon and water fluxes, using seedling experiments and global tree growth datasets.
Craig Brodersen
Yale University, CT·Plant Science & Agriculture
Measure guard cell and epidermal cell turgor pressure directly in living leaves, using a laser-induced gas bubble whose collapse rate reveals the pressure inside the cell.
The school
Colorado State University-Fort Collins: 23 labs on PI Pages, $466M a year on research, 276 research doctorates a year.
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