Steven Kannenberg, Ph.D

Research interests

Dr. Kannenberg’s research is centered around how global change impacts the health and functioning of forest ecosystems.

Currently, the lab is focused on:

1. How climate extremes such as drought and heat waves impact the physiology of trees and the flow of carbon and water through entire ecosystems
   
   
2. The degree to which climate change alters the ability of forests to take up carbon, and how where that carbon is allocated (leaves, trunk, roots, reproduction, respiration, etc.) dictates a forest’s ability to store carbon in the long term
   
   
3. The ways that plants can regulate their water use and photosynthetic rates during environmental stress (known as “plant water-use strategies”), and how these strategies impact other aspects of plant physiology including their ability to survive drought

Dr. Kannenberg tackles these questions using multiple approaches, including plant eco-physiology, dendroecology, eddy covariance, stable isotope techniques, and vegetation modeling. These toolkits allow the lab to investigate the impacts of global change on forests across scales, from individual trees to entire ecosystems. This wide range of methodological approaches is necessary to build a holistic understanding of the challenges that the world’s forests face.