CLASSES: Click for
links to Spring 2008 classes: Graphs and Maps: Evolution: Environment-History-Nature
And to classes taught in previous
terms
Link to the Bennington
College
Biodiversity site.
REPRINTS of some research
papers.
DESERT ECOLOGY CLASS
Wesley Bernegger (left) and Avi Ragaven, student field
crew members, summer 2007, at research field-site in the Huron Mountains of northern Michigan.
The yellow instrument, a laser mapping tool, is being used to census
trees and map coarse woody debris (dead wood) in old-growth
hemlock-hardwood forests.
Kerry
Woods
Ecology, evolution, botany, and
environmental
studies
Ph.D. Cornell University, 1980
Bennington College, 1986
I am a field-oriented, teaching
scientist. My primary classes concern ecology, botany,
biogeography, and evolution. I also teach courses
and tutorials on
a variety of environmental themes;
I'm
particularly interested in
issues
involving agriculture, forestry, environmental history, and landscape
management. (see link to Classes,
below).
I have conducted research in paleoecology,
plant
community
ecology, and plant population biology in both terrestrial and aquatic
systems.
Students are integrally involved in all of my research. Currently, my
research
is concentrated in two on-going projects.
- The first is a long-term study of the
properties and
dynamics of two stands of old-growth forest in northern Michigan. This
work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, and the U.S.
Forest Service, and is
currently
funded by the Andrew J. Mellon Foundation. It has involved more
than 30 Bennington undergrads (see, for example, the link to
Daniel Brese's
thesis presentation at top), and has led to a Bullard fellowship at
Harvard Forest, the Manierre Award of the Huron Mt. Wildlife
Foundation, and many publications
and research seminars (see C.V.).
- More locally, I am working with students
to reconstruct land-use history in a section of the northern
Taconic Mts. and, eventually, a history- and landscape-based model of
current vegetation pattern. This
project
involves work with digital imagery and maps, use of GPS technologies to
map landscape pattern (old roads, stone walls, etc.), vegetation
sampling, dendrochronology, and modeling and analysis using a
Geographic
Information System (GIS). This work has included a vegetation survey at
the Merck
Forest
and Farmland Center, in the context of management plan development
for the 3000 acres of forest land owned by the Center, and a contract
with the Green Mt. National Forest for development of a vegetation
classification for newly acquired lands in Bennington County. The
study is now focused on state-owned lands in Washington Co., NY.
Other
current professional involvements include:
- associate editorships for journals of the
Ecological Society of America and the International Association for
Vegetation Science.
- Director of Research for the Huron Mt. Wildlife Foundation, and
- Program Chair for the annual meeting of the Ecological
Society of America in San Jose in 2007.
For more
detailed information, go to:
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