Lab Director - Monica T. Rother

Dr. Rother is a forest and fire ecologist who specializes in fire ecology,, climate-fire relationships, tree-ring science, tree regeneration dynamics, plant community ecology, and forest disturbances. She in an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Previously, she worked as a fire ecologist at Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy, in Tallahassee, Florida.

Dr. Rother's publications can be found here:

Madison Gerdes

Madison is completing a Master's thesis that uses tree rings and foraminifera to study how saltwater intrusion is leading to the formation of ghost forests.

Cassidy Damm

Cassidy Damm is an undergraduate student working as a research assistant on multiple forest and fire ecology and dendrochronology projects. She is completing and honors thesis related to old-growth longleaf pine forests.

Eve Cuccurullo

Eve is completing an Honors Thesis that uses GIS data and tree rings to examine fire activity and stand-age structure across pocosins and savannas of the Green Swamp Preserve, NC.

Haley Hightower

Haley is completing an undergraduate honors thesis based on a climate-change experiment involving longleaf pine and wiregrass in a recently burned old field.

Eamon Murphy

Eamon is a graduate student working as a research assistant on multiple forest and fire ecology projects.

Lab Group! 😀

Come join the lab, wood you?

Previous students (only multi-semester project-based students are listed below - grad year in parentheses):

Kendra Devereux - Graduate student, THESIS: "Dendrochronological and Foraminiferal Analyses on the Effects of Saltwater Intrusion on Bald Cypress Growth in Freshwater Tidal Wetlands Along Smith Creek, NC." (2024)

Jesse Wilson - Graduate student, Project: Tree-ring chronology building as part of an NSF project on tropical cyclone precipitation (2024)

Ellie Bucci - Undergraduate student, Project: "A comparison of fire-scars to fire management records."

Lukas Farlow - Graduate Student, PORTFOLIO: "First North Carolina Prescribed Fire Needs Assessment." (2023)

Alex Noble, Undergraduate student, Project: multiple projects including a cambial phenology study in longleaf pine (2022).

Ivanna Knox, Graduate student, Project: Using the latewood of longleaf pine to reconstruct tropical cyclone precipitation (2022).

Thibault Desbois, Graduate student - visiting intern from France (2022).

Roxann Brna, Undergraduate student, Project (honors thesis): An assessment of old-growth longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) on public lands in New Hanover County, NC (2022).

Sydney Hoffman, Undergraduate student, Project: multiple projects including a field experiment to assess climate changes on longleaf pine and wiregrass (2022).

Haleigh White, Undergraduate student, lab assistant focused on tree-ring research (2022).

Jenna Seagle, Undergraduate student, Project: Stand-age structure of a managed longleaf pine landscape.

Dawson Purvis, Undergraduate student, Lab assistant focused on fire history projects involving tree rings. (2021).

Philip Cross, Undergraduate student, Lab assistant focused on processing wood for analysis. (2020).

Andrew Kiley, Undergraduate student, Project: wildfire regime changes in the southeastern U.S. (2020).

Jacob Irvin, Master's student, Research Assistantship: A comparison of prescribed fire records to fire-scar records (2019).

Megan Husain, Undergraduate student, Project: A tree-ring based fire history of the Red Hills Region in northern Florida and southern Georgia (2019).

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