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Truman P. Young - Professor and Restoration Ecologist

 

 

Truman P. Young

Department of Plant Sciences

University of California, Davis
Davis, CA 95616

Room 2234, PES Building

Tel. (530) 754-9925
Fax (530) 752-1819
Email: tpyoung@ucdavis.edu

 

 

Recent lab news:

Dec 2011            Lab alumnus Kurt Vaughn (2011) hired as Habitat Restoration Project Manager for Audubon California

Nov 2011            Marit Wilkerson co-organized the workshop, "Role of science and scientists in collaborative conservation decision-making and planning: A workshop in skill development"

Nov 2011            Paper by Lauren Porensky and Kurt Vaughn accepted in Ecological Applications

Nov 2011            Lauren Porensky organized and presented the field day "Using Livestock to Improve Rangelands" at Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Laikipia, Kenya

Oct 2011            Marit Wilkerson is awarded the Spurr Service Award for outstanding accomplishment in outreach

Sept 2011           Wilfred Odadi's article on cattle-zebra interactions appears in Science (see also this and listen to this)

Sept 2011           Jen Balachowski and her NSF IGERT cohort host an all-day workshop (What’s this?)

Aug 2011            Marit Wilkerson is awarded the Niering Award for Best Student Presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for Ecological Restoration in Merida, Mexico

Aug 2011            Kevin Welch received additional grant support from USFS for his research on forest regeneration after fire (total: $210,000)

Aug 2011            Lauren Porensky is awarded Young Woman Ecologist of the Year at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Austin

Sum 2011           Kelly Gravuer does an NSF IGERT internship with USFWS and Cal Fish & Game, examining various aspects of vernal pool conservation banks

July 2011            Lauren Porensky's paper, “When edges meet: interacting edge effects in an African savanna”, is published in Journal of Ecology (99:923-934).

July 2011            Lab alumna Kari Veblen (2008) takes an Assistant Professor position in the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University

May 2011            Emily Peffer is awarded $49,000 grant from the Solano County Water Authority

Apr 2011            Incoming students Derek Young and Laura Morales are awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowships

Feb 2011            NSF grant co-written by Kurt Vaughn is awarded $430,000: “Contingency in ecological restoration”

 

OK, Back to Truman's stuff

CV

1972-75         University of Chicago (B.A.)
1976-81         University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D.)
1981-91         Post-doc, Lecturer, Consultant, Scientific Director, peripatetic tropical ecologist
1992-96         Associate Professor, Fordham University
1996-2003      Lecturer, Assistant and Associate Professor, University of California, Davis
2003-present  Professor, University of California, Davis

Research Interests:

I have broad interests in plant population and community ecology.  For the past 20 years, I have been involved with more applied research at the community and landscape scales.  My current research projects are related to the management, conservation, and restoration of human-dominated landscapes.

My current research focuses on the following projects:

  1. Contingency in restoration ecology (CIRE): priority effects, alternative states, and year effects
  2. Livestock and biodiversity in an African savanna (KLEE)

 

Secondary (and past) research includes:

  1. Planting issues in ecological restoration (PIER)
  2. The maintenance of biodiversity in a model system (ACACIA)
  3. The evolution of semelparity

 

My early research (1970s and '80s) concentrated on basic and theoretical questions in population ecology, and the ecology of Mount Kenya. 

Graduate student research

I also collaborate with my wife, Lynne Isbell, in her studies of primate behavioral ecology.  I provide a life history and plant ecological perspective to her explorations of how food and predation influence the evolution of mammalian behavior. (Behavioral ecology publications).

I am a member of the Graduate Group in Ecology and the Center for Population Biology.

UC Davis Spotlight article on the KLEE exclosure project

Klee monochromatic

Satellite view of the KLEE exclosure plots in Laikipia, Kenya, where we have been excluding various combinations of cattle, wildlife, and mega-herbivores (elephants and giraffes) from a savanna grassland since 1995.  Each of the 18 plots is 200m x 200m.  This is an NDVI image, where lighter areas are indicative of higher productivity.  The larger white areas are anthropogenic glades, and the smaller white areas are low termite "mounds".  Both are hot spots of soil fertility, plant productivity, and animal use.

Click on the image to enlarge and show in false color, where the high-productvity areas appear red.