Ryan Pienaar

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher Associate in the SILVIS and Pauli labs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As an ecologist, I am interested in all sorts of plants, animals, and ecosystems. Because there are too many interesting things to study anyone specifically, I use quantitative methods to understand ecological processes. This allows me to do research in many different ecosystems. I am particularly interested in how human actions are altering biodiversity.

I completed my PhD at Brigham Young University in the of Dr Sam St Clair. My PhD research focused on how fire affects plant and animal species in forest and desert ecosystems. Deserts of the Western United States are threatened by invasive annual grass fire cycles that can alter vegetation dominance with cascading effects on other species in the community. I investigated how fire, herbivory, and climate shape desert plant, rodent, and ant communities. In forests I am using camera traps to determine deer and elk occupancy along burned edges of multiple forest types after a megafire.

My research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison aims to simulate the effects of forest tree disease on wildlife poulation dynamics on the Apostle Islands. Simulation modeling can help inform proactive management to better conserve wildlife and wild places.

Outside of academic research I try to instill enthusiasm for wildlife and then natural environment in children by visiting elementary schools and teaching about wildlife.