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Truman P. Young - Professor and Restoration Ecologist

 

 

Truman P. Young

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:

May 2013        Lab alumnus Wilfred Odadi is awarded a NatureNet Science Fellowship at The Nature Conservancy.

May 2013        Derek Young is awarded a National Park Service George Melendez Wright Climate Change Fellowship!

May 2013        Mila Hickenbottom accompanies Hugh Safford (USFS) to Baja to study fire and Mexican forests.

April 2013        Marit Wilkerson's model of invasive species in landscape linkages is accepted in Ecography.

April 2013       Lauren Porensky and Corinna Riginos are co-authors on a paper published in Ecology based on their landscape-scale experiments.

April 2013         Jen Balachowski is awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to work in Montpellier, France!

April 2013         Lab alumna Corinna Riginos begins her position as Ecology Research Director at the Conservation Research Center of Teton Science Schools.

Feb-Mar 2013     Ryan Sensenig and Duncan Kimuyu complete 18 controlled burns in the KLEE plots.

February 2013     Lauren Porensly, Corinna Riginos et al. publish a paper on KLEE vegetation in Ecological Applications.

February 2013     Kevin Welch receives additional support from USFS for the study of forest regeneration after fire.

January 2013     KLEE NSF grant is renewed for five more years.

December 2012   Kelly Gravuer is awarded a Foin Fellowship.

November 2012   Lab alumna Megan Lulow & Truman publish a paper on Caifornia Prairies in Fremontia.

November 2012   Lynne Isbell et al. publish a paper on gender bias at scientific meetings in PLoS ONE.

October 2012      Lauren Porensky's review of interacting edges is accepted in Conservation Biology.

September 2012  Summary of KLEE research as it informs livestock management is published in the open-access journal Pastoralism: Research Policy and Practice.

August 2012       Lauren McGeoch Porensky receives her Ph.D., and begins a post-doc with Beth Leger at UNR.

August 2012       Jen Balachowski and Kelly Gravuer receive Ernest Hill Fellowships

August 2012       Marit Wilkerson, Emily Peffer, Jen Balachowski, and Duncan Kimuyu (and alums Kari Veblen, Corinna Riginos, and Todd Palmer) give presentations at the ESA Annual Meeting in Portland.

July 2012           Lab alumnus Todd Palmer is granted tenure at the University of Florida.

May 2012            Study of 'spatial priority' by Lauren Porensky, Kurt Vaughn and Truman is published in Ecological Applications

Apr 2012            Kelly Gravuer gets a scholarship to attend the Microbial Diversity Course at Woods Hole

Apr 2012            Incoming student Grace Charles is awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

 

OK, Back to Truman's stuff:

Truman Young CV

Professional History:

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, restoration, and conservation 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
  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 display in false color, where the high-productvity areas appear red.