Connor Crouch

A man with a shaved head and a red beard measures a birch tree's diameter in winter.
Assistant Professor
he/him/his
[email protected]
Google Scholar
Education

  • Ph.D. 2023, Forest Science, Northern Arizona University

  • M.S. 2019, Natural Resources, University of Missouri

  • B.J. 2017, Journalism, University of Missouri

External Affiliations

Society of American Foresters (SAF)

Areas of Interest

Silviculture, forest health, forest ecology, climate change adaptation, and invasive species.

Biography

Dr. Connor Crouch is an Assistant Professor of Forest Regeneration in the Department of Forest Resources at University of Minnesota. Connor’s passion for forestry was first sparked on a backpacking trip in the Smoky Mountains, where he witnessed widespread mortality of Fraser fir due to an invasive insect and warming temperatures at high elevations. Although he was well on his way to a journalism degree at the time, Connor made an abrupt shift and decided to devote his career to solving urgent problems facing forest ecosystems. Before joining the University of Minnesota, Connor was a Presidential Management Fellow with the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station and worked as timber program manager for the Santa Fe National Forest.

Research

Connor’s research seeks to (1) understand how threats to forest health and sustainability, including invasive species, altered disturbance regimes, and climate change, influence forest structure and composition and (2) develop management strategies that restore forest ecosystems and enable them to adapt in an increasingly uncertain future. His research has a strong emphasis on regeneration, a stage of development that is central to forest ecosystem sustainability and adaptation, because regenerating trees are the forests of the future. Connor’s research is inherently applied, and his research questions are often directly motivated by the needs of natural resource managers.