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Speaker

Anna Trugman
Department of Geography
UC Santa Barbara

Abstract

Climate change has the potential to massively disrupt terrestrial ecosystem productivity, impacting biodiversity and ecosystem services, and driving Earth’s forests to release carbon into the atmosphere, which would further exacerbate climate change. Critically, the physiological mechanisms underpinning forest responses to climate are not fully understood due to complex interactions between climate, tree physiology, and community ecology. Here, I leverage plant physiological observations, large observational databases, and trait-based ecosystem models to understanding the physiological and ecological unknowns underlying observed patterns of disturbance and drought-driven mortality, which can have major carbon cycle consequences. I then highlight strengths and limitations in each approach and process uncertainties exposed by this hierarchy of techniques.

Bio

Anna Trugman is an ecologist with a multidisciplinary background in the earth sciences. Her research interests are centered around understanding the Earth system consequences of plant physiological processes and ecological interactions, particularly in water limited systems and novel climate conditions expected with anthropogenic climate change. Anna received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University in Geological and Environmental Sciences, her Ph.D. from Princeton University in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and spent two years at the University of Utah in the Biology Department. She has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at UC Santa Barbara since 2019.