Governance

Vegetation Section Officers

Chair: Carissa Brown (carissab@nullmun.ca)

Carissa is a plant ecologist and associate professor of biogeography at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. Her Northern EDGE Lab research group focuses on the distribution of plant species at the edge of their ranges, with particular emphasis on non-climatic factors influencing species responses to climate change. Her research primarily takes place in fire-driven boreal forest ecosystems, in both sub-arctic and southern regions. Carissa champions the use of experimentation in field studies, and leads the Global Treeline Range Expansion Experiment. She has been engaged with ESA since her first meeting in Montreal in 2005, most recently chairing ESA’s W.S. Cooper Award Committee, as well as being an active member of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution.

Vice Chair: Andrés Andrade (Andres.Andrade@nulldri.edu)

Andrés is a plant and fire ecologist whose research examines how changing fire regimes due to historical fire suppression and climate change may alter post-fire successional trajectories and decrease ecosystem resilience over time.  Andrés completed his B.S. in Biology and Ph.D in Integrative Biology at the University of Colorado Denver, where he investigated understory community assembly over three decades following the 1988 Yellowstone fires. Currently, Andrés is a postdoctoral fellow at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, where he is investigating how to leverage satellite-derived drought monitoring indices, which incorporate information on antecedent climate and fuels availability, to improve seasonal fire potential forecasts. Moreover, he works to increase participation of underrepresented groups in science through mentorship and experiential research. Andrés has been a member of ESA since 2018 and served previously as the Student Representative for the Vegetation Section (2019 – 2020), as well as a Graduate Mentor in the Strategies for Ecology, Education, Diversity, and Sustainability (SEEDS) program.

Secretary/Treasurer: Anita Thompson (anitathompson@nullarizona.edu)

Anita is with the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension as an Agriculture Agent where she focuses primarily on arid lands sustainable agriculture and agroecology, with additional work in vegetation management for agricultural enterprises. Her bachelor’s degrees are in Forest Management and Rangeland Ecology from University of Nevada – Reno and her master’s is from Colorado State University in Natural Resource Stewardship/Ecological Restoration. Before joining University of Arizona, Anita worked for the USDA Forest Service as a silviculturist doing vegetation management in ponderosa pine and pinyon-juniper vegetation types, and she owned and worked a southwestern native seed farm.

Student Rep: Emmanuel Komolafe (ekomolaf@nulluwyo.edu)

Emmanuel is a PhD candidate in Plant Ecology at the University of Wyoming. For the past five years, his research has focused on carbon sequestration, forest inventory, and soil nutrient dynamics in tropical forests. By improving the quality of climate data and understanding the drivers of climate change in tropical Nigerian forests, Emmanuel aims to contribute to global efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. From 2015 to 2019, Emmanuel co-led an interdisciplinary research project that studied changes in species diversity in selected protected forests in Nigeria. As a result of this research, five species of resilient indigenous trees were identified, and Emmanuel assisted local authorities in designing a Climate Adaptation Plan in response to the loss of indigenous trees in Atakumosa Local Government Area, Osun State, Nigeria.

Past Chair: Martin Dovčiak (mdovciak@nullesf.edu) 

Martin is an associate professor in forest ecology at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF) in Syracuse. He received his PhD is from the University of Minnesota and post-doctoral training from the University of Washington-both in forest ecology. His undergraduate degree is in forest engineering from Technical University in Zvolen, Slovakia. Martin’s research focuses on responses of forest ecosystems and plant communities to various global change drivers and on ecological applications in forest ecosystem management. Martin joined ESA in 2002 and served as Vice Chair for ESA Vegetation Section from 2019 to 2021 and as the Vegetation Section Chair and ESA Council member from 2021 to 2023. He has served as Subject Matter Editor for Ecological Applications since 2021.