Latest News

We were thrilled to host Dr. Jess Rickenback, from the University of Edinburgh, on a short visit. Dr. Rickenback introduced us to her work using phylogenetics, evolution, and ecology to understand the biogeography and diversity of the ground layer in Southeast Asian savannas, and she gave an excellent talk in the department!

The Schwartz lab was at ESA 2024. Naomi organized a symposium on “Reconciling Carbon Sequestration, Biodiversity Conservation, and Multiple Land Uses in Tropical Grassy Ecosystems,” and lab MSc student Mia Fajeau gave an excellent talk on her work using terrestrial laser scanning to understand impacts of fire suppression in Southeast Asian savannas.

The lab has a new website! (And if you’re reading this, you’ve already found it!) Check out our "lab wiki page", for some helpful resources. Thanks to lab member Kelsey McGuire for her hard work getting the new website and interactive wiki page off the ground!

We are happy to share that Charlotte C. Smith, a visiting PhD student to the lab in 2021 has recently had her paper, "Amazonian secondary forests are greatly reducing fragmentation and edge exposure in old-growth forests", accepted into Environmental Research Letters.

A new study co-authored by assistant professor Naomi Schwartz has assessed how forests are coping with one particular aspect of climate change; temperature variability. “We are seeing global temperature change in two distinct ways: average temperatures are rising and temperature is becoming more variable year to year,” Dr.