Michael S. Ross, Ph.D.

Associate Research Scientist, SERC/Ecology

Dr. Ross's general research interests are in the area of environmental controls on plant community composition and structure, the involvement of these controls in the successional process, and the implications of successional development on restoration efforts. His approach often incorporates large-scale field manipulations with pattern analysis based on "natural experiments", usually arrayed along well-defined environmental gradients. His background and expertise is largely in forests of the southern Appalachians, the Lake states, boreal central Alberta, and the tropical Florida Keys. The challenge in developing successional models for such forested ecosystems is to incorporate interactions within and among spatially-variable, size-structured populations. Presently, the majority of his research has been directed toward restoration of the mixture of forested and herbaceous coastal wetlands of mainland south Florida.