ABOUT THE LAB

My lab’s research focuses broadly on quantifying controls on mass and energy exchange between vegetated landscapes and the atmosphere at scales ranging from individual leaves to entire watersheds; exploring the interface between soils, vegetation and the atmosphere in a watershed context; and understanding terrestrial water and carbon cycles in the face of global change. 

Projects are currently underway in North Carolina and Montana and include investigations of carbon cycling in forested, mountain watersheds; understanding the implications of vegetation heterogeneity in watershed networks; assessing secondary succession broadly across North Carolina using remote sensing tools; and quantifying land-atmosphere fluxes over Christmas tree farms, one of the dominant land-use types in the southern Appalachians.  I teach relevant courses on hydrology and environmental geology.

NEWS AND UPDATES

1. 1.5/2010 - New ENSO-Groundwater paper published in WRR; third most-downloaded article during week of 5/10/10.
   

2. 2.5/2010 - Lidar/Secondary Succession Training Workshop is underway in Boone!
   

3. 3.3/2010 - Ryan participates in the DISCCRS V Symposium at Saguaro Lake Ranch.
   

4. 4.1/2010 - Website advertising Mountain Ecohydrology field course is up and running!
   

5. 5.12/2009 - Ryan and Anna present research at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco.
   

6. 6.11/2009 - ENSO-groundwater manuscript by Bill Anderson and Ryan accepted for publication in Water Resources Research.
   

7. 7.10/2009 - Ryan and Teresa Mourad (ESA) tour NC institutions to recruit for ecosystem succession project! (See Projects and Photos)
   

8. 8.New AppalAIR website featured in Appalachian Today!
   

9. 9.Two new NSF grants for research!
   

10. 10.AppalAIR in the news again! (Asheville Citizen-Times)
    

COURSES

GLY 1103 - Environmental and Applied Geology

GLY 4210 - Geology Senior Seminar

GLY 4630/5630 - Hydrology/Hydrogeology

UNDERGRADUATE OPPORTUNITIES

The Department of Geology is an undergraduate degree-granting department.  Undergraduate research assistants are important members of the lab.  Contact Ryan for current undergraduate research opportunities.