CLASSES: Click for links
to Fall 2009 classes: Forests:
Ecology and Evolution, Global
Change
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.
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:
Classes (including lists of links)
A more detailed curriculum vitae (for downloadable reprints of some papers, go HERE)
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