Leander studies the biogeographic, demographic and biogeochemical implications of tree responses to climate change. He combines methods from community ecology, dendrochronology, plant ecophysiology, and stable isotope biogeochemistry to understand the sensitivity of forests in the western U.S.A. and Australia to various global change drivers.
A Colorado native, Leander received a PhD in Biology from the University of Washington in 2017 (working with Janneke Hille Ris Lambers), and started an NSF and NOAA-funded Postdoctoral Fellowship with Joe Berry (Carnegie Institution for Science, Dept. of Global Ecology) and Todd Dawson (UC Berkeley) in Aug. 2017.
Leander's research focuses on four themes:
1. Predicting plant and ecosystem responses to rising CO2. Human CO2 emissions have shifted the global water-carbon market place in plants favor, yet the observed ‘CO2 fertilization’ effect has proven extremely variable. Using historical plant specimens, modern comparison samples, and mechanistic physiological models, Leander is reconstructing how plants altered their physiology, morphology and growth in response to a century of rising CO2. The goal of this work is to understand how environmental context (e.g. amount of water stress) and plant traits (e.g. water use strategies) determine plant responses to CO2.
2. Determining where tree ranges are limited by climate vs. biotic interactions. This distinction is critical for anticipating range shifts, and Leander uses a variety of methods, particularly dendrochronology, to differentiate the drivers of tree range boundaries.
3. Exploring intraspecific trait variation in stress tolerance traits. Functional traits are a critical ecological tool, yet we know surprisingly little about trait variation within individual species. Leander uses geographic trait variation within species to explore the mechanisms that constraint species distributions as well as the physiological and evolutionary trade-offs that drive the integration of multiple traits into a whole organism.
4. Understanding climate-induced forest mortality and the ecological impacts of extreme drought. Leander studies the ecohydrology and ecophysiology behind climate-induced tree die-off, as well as the consequences of canopy tree mortality for plant communities.
