Biogeography Specialty Group Award Recipients

Student Research Grants

The BSG sponsors a grant competition each year to support student research in biogeography.  Typically, a grant of several hundred dollars (generated from BSG member dues) is awarded to a student conducting thesis research, at both the masters and Ph.D. level.  The criteria used for evaluating the applicants include the scientific merit of the proposed research, the soundness of the proposed methods and analyses, and the appropriateness of the budget items.  Applicants are also evaluated in terms of their past experience and their level of need.

1992	Ph.D.	John Kupfer	Univ. of Iowa	“Effects of edge vegetation on interior gap successional processes”
1993	Ph.D.	David Cairns	Univ. of Iowa	“Simulation modeling of treeline in Glacier National Park”
	Masters	Leslie Bolick	San Diego State Univ.	“Conservation of plants and birds at Mount Talau, Vava, United Kingdom of Tonga”
1994	Ph.D.	Alison Arians	Univ. of Colorado-Boulder	“Primary succession of latitudinal treeline spruce forests on arctic floodplains: Noatak National Preserve, Alaska”
	Masters	Karen Borza	Pennsylvania State Univ.	“The role of fire in maintaining structural and compositional diversity in eastern serpentine ecosystems”
1995	Ph.D.	Alison Arian	Univ. of Colorado-Boulder	“The impact of flood frequency, permafrost distribution, and climate variation on a northern treeline floodplain in Alaska”
1996	Ph.D.	Ricardo Grau	Univ. of Colorado-Boulder	“Disturbance and tree species diversity along the elevational gradient of a subtropical montane forest”
	Masters	Ralph Campbell	New Mexico State Univ.	“A predictive GIS model of cougar habitat for the San Andreas Mountains”
1997	Ph.D.	Ginger Birkeland	Arizona State Univ.	“ Patternsof riparian vegetation and flood power along streams in south central Utah”
	Masters	Theresa Burscu	Univ. of North Carolina	“Remote biomass estimation of oak scrub, Kennedy Space Center, Florida”
1998	Ph.D.	Charles Lafon	Univ. of Tennessee	“Ice storm effects on northeast forests”
	Masters	Deborah Kurtz	Montana State Univ.	“Exotic species in Grand Teton National Park”
1999	Ph.D.	Stacy Jorgensen	Univ. of Georgia	“ Evolutionary biogeography of the Hawaiian endemic Lipochaeta ”
	Masters
2000	Ph.D.	Mike Pisaric	Queens Univ.	“Tree line dynamics and the paleoecological history of the northern Rocky Mountains”
	Ph.D.	Kim Diver	Syracuse Univ.	“Biogeography of island flora in the Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, Ontario”
	Masters	Kelly Pohl	Portland State Univ.	“Climatic variation and forest disturbance in Central Oregon”
2001	Ph.D.	Matt Beaty	Pennsylvania State Univ.	“ Multiscale analysis of disturbance and vegetation dynamics in the central Sierra Nevada”
	Masters	Karen Eisenhart	Univ. of Colorado-Boulder	“Historic range of variability and stand development in pinyon pine woodlands of western Colorado”
2002	Ph.D.	Rosemary Sherriff	Univ. of Colorado-Boulder	“The historical range of variability of fire in the montane zone of the northern Colorado front range: past fire types and fire effects”
	Masters	Kathryn Hrinkevich	Portland State Univ.	“Forest edge dynamics in a naturally fragmented landscape”
2003	Ph.D.	Chris Duvall	Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison	“Spatial assessment of chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus ) population and habitat in the Bafing protected areas, Mali”
	Masters	Joanne Stewart	Univ. of Denver	“Influence of landscape characteristics on spatial patterns of bats within riparian habitats on the Great Plains”
2004	Ph.D.	Kevin Anchukaitis	Univ. of Arizona	“A test of tropical isotope dendrochronology in montane cloud forests"
	Masters	Evan Larson	Univ. of Tennessee	“Fire history at tree line in the Rocky Mountains of Montana using long-lived whitebark pine”
2005	Ph.D.	Chad Lane	Univ. of Tennessee	"Late Holocene paleoenvironmental change in the Dominican Republic: Evidence from pollen, charcoal, and isotope stratigraphies of two small, mid-elevation lakes."
		C. Andres Holz	Univ. of Colorado-Boulder	"Forest decline in Patagonia: a multiscale approach"
	Masters	Carla Vandervoort	Univ. of Colorado-Boulder	""Geographic parthenogenesis: a case study of the distribution of Erigeron strigosus (Asteraceae) in Georgia, U.S."
2006	Ph.D.	Scott Markwith	Univ. of Georgia	“Application of hydrologic modeling for investigating hydrochory in the aquatic macrophyte Hymenocallis coronaria”
	Masters	Ranya Henson	Univ. of Hawaii-Hilo	“Genetic structure in the Hawaiian Intertidal Zone: Space, scale, and disturbance”
2007	Ph.D.	Grant Elliott	Univ. of Minnesota	“Spatiotemporal influences of climate on upper treeline dynamics along a latitudinal gradient in the Rocky Mountains, USA”
		Daehyun Kim	Texas A&M Univ.	“Spatial zonation of vegetation on a salt marsh ecosystem: implications of micro-spatial scale processes and land use history”
	Masters	Sarah McLane	Univ. of South Carolina	“An integrated approach to modeling invasive species as a part of a watershed management partnership in the Kohala Mountains, Hawaii"
2008	Ph.D.	Jacquelyn Gill	Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison	“Counting spores from the dung fungus Sporormiella in archived pollen slides to reconstruct the spatiotemporal patterns and ecological context of the North American megafaunal extinction”
	Masters	Kerry Malm	Univ. of Colorado-Boulder	“Modeling mountain pine beetle phenology in northern Colorado and the potential impact of climate change”
2009	Ph.D.	William Flatley	Texas A&M University	“Implications of an altered fire regime for forest dynamics along a topographic gradient in the southern Appalachian Mountains”
	Masters	Yanan Li	University of Tennessee	“The impact of oceanic-atmospheric-oscillations in the southeastern United States from a network of tree-ring data”
2010	Ph.D.	Kimberly Meitzen	Univ. of South Carolina	“Hydrogeomorphology and vegetation ecology of abandoned meander wetlands in a large floodplain, South Carolina”
2011	Ph.D.	Michael Habberfield	State University of New York at Buffalo	“Investigating the influence of pool and landscape features on the spatial dynamics of amphibian breeding in a vernal pool complex in central New York”
	Masters	Joshua Leisen	Univ. of South Carolina	“Effects of riverscape connectivity on fish metacommunity structure and turnover”

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If you have information to fill in the gaps in this history of awards, please contact John Kupfer
Last update: June 27, 2011