People : Projects : Places : Publications
Principle Investigator
Ryan W. McEwan, PhD Links - Ohio Tree Identification Site Courses - Plant Diversity and Ecology (Biology 407 & 407L) - Ecological Restoration (BIO 409 & 409L) - Ecology Brownbag (BIO 601) Fall 2010
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Ryan climbing a Callary Pear |
Current Lab Members
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Graduate Students |
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| Rachel Barker, MS Rachel Barker is a PhD student in the lab who is co-advised by Dr. Eric Benbow. She is an aquatic ecologist by training, and worked on numerous research projects as an undergraduate at Millersville University in the lab of Dr. John Wallace. Her work in the lab focuses on understanding the links between terrestrial and aquatic habitats, and she is using the invasion of local forests by an exotic shrub as her model system. |
Rachel measuring some aquatic critter.
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| Julia Chapman, BS. Julia is a MS student in the lab who recently graduated from the Department of Environmental and Plant Biology at Ohio University where she worked with Dr. Phil Cantino on the ecology and control of garlic mustard. An avid and accomplished botanist, and banisher of invasive species, she was a 2009 winner of the Botanical Society of America's Young Botanist Award. Her work in the lab centers on understanding long-term dynamics in the herbaceous layer of Lilley Cornett Woods, an old-growth forests of southeastern Kentucky.
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Julia teaching dendrology
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| Sean Goins, BS. Sean is a MS student in the lab who recently graduated from the Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Kentucky University. He also worked with the NKU Center for Applied Ecology. In the lab Sean is launching a project that uses dendroecology (the study of tree-rings to assess ecological change) to investigate forest dynamics in the Ohio Valley over the last 300 years.
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Sean in the Red River Gorge |
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Undergraduate Researchers |
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Eryn Moore Eryn is a UD Senior in the Environmental Biology major and an undergraduate technician in the Lab. She has been working on a variety of projects, including our ongoing stream restoration project. In particular, she is received funding from Learn, Lead and Serve at UD to heading up a native species restoration effort in a stream riparian zone. She is working with the Centerville-Washington Township Parks in this project. Eryn also spent summer of 2011 working as an intern at the Cleveland Botanical Garden.
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Eryn stream sampling
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Simon McClung Simon is a mad scientist in the lab and Senior in the UD Biology Major. Besides whipping up lunacy-inducing concoctions, Simon has been involved in an array of projects. He is currently helping organize some major projects in the lab and he occasionally brutalizes honeysuckle shrubs. |
You don't want to know what is in that pot.
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Charlie Jackson Charlie is a Junior in the UD Biology major. He has been involved in the lab as an assistant on Rachel Barkers project, and for the last year has been focused on an independent project focused on Emerald Ash Borer. Charlie is working at the Cox Arboretum, testing a new, organic approach for managing this invasive insect. He spent last summer working in the Hoosier National Forest in an summer tech position associated with Dr. Michael Jenkins. He is currently helping organize some major projects in the lab and he occasionally brutalizes honeysuckle shrubs. |
 Charlie kayaking near Riverscape, downtown Dayton. |
Lab Alumni (roughly chronological)
| Amy Hruska (UD Class of 2011) Amy was an undergraduate research Project Leader in the lab. She led an independent research project on the ecology of plant invasion in a variety of old-growth forests in Ohio and Kentucky. She also worked on a separate project in collaboration with the Five Rivers Metroparks to understand the process of restoring sites heavily invaded by honeysuckle. She graduated with a BS in Environmental Biology and also a GIS certificate. As of spring 2011, she has moved on to West Virginia University where she is pursuing a MS in Forest Ecology in the laboratory of Dr. Jim McGraw.
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Amy admiring a giant Fraxinus americana near Dinsmore Woods
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Grace John (UD Class of 2011) Grace was an undergraduate research Project Leader in the lab who worked on two projects. She is co-author on an analysis of flowering phenology change associated with climate warming in southwestern Ohio. That paper was published in the journal Plant Ecology. She was worked on a project focused on forest formation and dynamics in sections of Germantown Metropark here in Dayton. For that project she received funding from Learn, Lead and Serve at UD, and along with RWM also got funding from the Dayton Metroparks and from SEE at UD...meaning she funded her own research project. For the summer of 2010, she was awarded an REU position at the BioSphere 2 project. She graduated in Spring 2011 with a BS in Biology from UD and is now at UCLA working toward a PhD in the laboratory of Lauren Sack.
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Grace and a ravine at Glen Helen
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| Nolan Nicaise
(UD Class of 2011) Nolan, avid tree climber and deep thinker, was a Berry Scholar here at The University of Dayton who joined the lab in October 2008. He is recipient of a Learn, Lead and Serve Award with which he developed a tree-trail here at UD, and he worked on a historical ecology project using cabin samples. He spent the spring of his junior year in France, and the following summer in Appalachia. His Honors Thesis project was an analysis of the spatial distribution and socioecological implications of urban greenspace in the Dayton metro area. |
Pondering with Celtis
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Katie Norris (UD Class of 2010) Katie was a Berry Scholar here at The University of Dayton. She did her Honors Thesis in the lab working on a project that seeks to understand the relationship between regional land use, and the ecological integrity of the Great Miami River. She assembled a research flotilla and completed 2, 5 day, ~60 mile, paddling trip from Indian Lake to Dayton, sampling the river along the way. Katie graduated in spring of 2010, and joined the lab of Kevin Simon at the University of Maine and pursue a Master's degree in aquatic ecology.
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Katie navigating the Great Miami River
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Sarah Alverson Sarah was a gravity defying part-time technician in the lab (ca. 2009-2010) who took on a number of challenges. She organized a project funded by the Five Rivers Metroparks to restore an area invaded by honeysuckle, helped with a series of data analyses, and generally supported all of the ongoing lab activities. She is now a full-time naturalist and educator at Aullwood Audubon Center here in Dayton.
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Sarah, always climbing to new heights
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M. Keith Birchfield
Keith was an undergraduate technician par excellence who worked on several projects when RWM was a post-doc in the University of Kentucky, Department of Forestry. Although he only worked in the lab for 1 year, Keith is a co-author on a manuscript that was recently published. During this time, besides becoming a forest ecology junkie, Keith was making music with two Lexington (KY) based groups (The Fakes and Idaho, Alaska). Keith is currently pursing a Master's degree in Forest Ecology at Washington State University, Vancouver (just outside of Portland, OR) in the laboratory of Dr. John Bishop working on Mount St. Helens. |
Keith and twisty chestnut oak at Robinson Forest
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