Peter Reich

Research Professor

Distinguished McKnight University Professor

he/him/his

[email protected]

(612) 624-4270

Forest Ecology Lab

Curriculum Vitae (CV)

Education

Ph.D. 1983, Cornell University

Courses taught

Policy and Science of Global Environmental Change

Areas of Interest

Forests, grasslands, biology, ecology, climate change, and social justice.

Biography

Reich’s work is multi-faceted and touches upon various aspects of terrestrial ecology, attempting to link fundamental physiology with community dynamics and ecosystem structure and function, within the context of the myriad of global environmental challenges that face us. This includes studying the effects on ecosystems of rising CO 2 and associated climate change, biodiversity loss, and wildfire. This research involves a variety of tools and approaches (experiments, observations, models), a diverse set of ecosystems (boreal forest, temperate grassland, and more), and a range of scales (local, regional, global).

Teaching

My teaching involves a mix of classroom teaching, mentor teaching and public outreach. In all of these my goal is to simultaneously help people build scientific interest and skills. This includes first, growing enthusiasm and interest in science generally (and ecological and environmental science specifically) and second, developing skills useful in evaluating evidence of all kinds, including both narrow scientific topics and the broader set of issues each of us faces as a citizen. My classroom teaching includes both undergraduate and graduate courses about climate change, coupled natural-human systems, and their interactions. My mentor teaching involves collaborative work primarily with graduate students and postdocs, but also with undergraduates and early career scientists and faculty. I engage in public outreach of many kinds, such as giving public seminars, volunteering in science and environmental initiatives, and helping to launch the science education channel, MinuteEarth, now with >350 million views on Youtube and other platforms.

Research

My research focuses on understanding and stewarding nature—as that is among our most important collective challenges in the 21st century. How rapidly and where will climate change wreak havoc with our natural and managed ecosystems? How many tree species will go extinct in the next 50 years and why does it matter? Will ecosystems continue to sequester additional carbon and thus help to slow climate change? Can traits simplify the complexity of ecology enough that we can make predictable sense of it? Raising such questions is easier than answering them. To help address them I engage in small-group to large-team studies at scales from leaf to globe and on topics from biodiversity to biogeochemistry to climate change-social justice interactions. This work ranges from ecosystem-scale field experiments with factors such as CO₂, temperature, rainfall, fire and biodiversity; to cross-continental observations and earth system modeling. Our work focuses on forests and grasslands of the temperate and boreal biomes, but also includes research in many other ecosystem types and regions.

Select Publications

Montgomery R, KE Rice, A Stefanski, RL Rich, PB Reich. 2020. "Phenological responses of temperate and boreal trees to warming depend on ambient spring temperatures, leaf habit, and geographic range." Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences 117:10397-10405
Reich PB, SE Hobbie, TD Lee, R Rich, MA Pastore, K Worm. 2020. "Synergistic effects of four climate change drivers on terrestrial carbon cycling." Nature Geoscience (in press)
Williams LJ, J Cavender-Bares, PA Townsend, JJ Couture, Z Wang, A Stefanski, C Messier, PB Reich. 2020. "Remote spectral detection of biodiversity effects on forest productivity." Nature Ecology and Evolution (in press).
Pastore MA, TD Lee, SE Hobbie, PB Reich. 2019. "Strong photosynthetic acclimation and enhanced water‐use efficiency in grassland functional groups persist over 21 years of CO₂ enrichment, independent of nitrogen supply." Global Change Biology 25:3031-3044
Butler, EE., A Datta, H Flores-Moreno, M Chen, … PB Reich. 2017. "Mapping local and global variability in plant trait distributions." Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences E10937–E10946

Additional publications available on Dr. Reich's CV.

Honors and Awards