German Vargas Gutierrez

Research interests:

Plant ecophysiology, tropical ecology, forest resilience, ecological modeling, climate change, plant hydraulics, ecological forecasting.

Lab website: Forest Ecophysiology Lab

Current research:

Our research focuses on understanding how forests and woody plant communities respond to global environmental change, with a particular emphasis on tropical and temperate ecosystems. We explore broad questions about these responses using a combination of field studies, physiological measurements, and ecological modeling.

Tropical Ecosystems:

• Tropical dry forest ecophysiology. We investigate the physiological variation in tropical dry forest tree species in the Americas, exploring its causes and consequences.
• Tropical forest resilience to climate change. We explore the role of physiological diversity in determining the future of tropical forests in a changing world.

Temperate Ecosystems:

• Resilience of Eastern Cascades forests to climate change. We study the effects of drought on forest ecosystems and explore the use of predictive tools (e.g., mechanistic models) to forecast the impacts of a changing climate on woody plant communities.
• Western Cascades/Coastal Range physiological diversity. We explore how physiology may limit species distribution and potentially predict species migration patterns in response to climate change.
• Willamette Valley woodlands resilience to climate change. We investigate whether these ecosystems can withstand drought and temperature extremes.

Prospective graduate students: 

Please review the research topics above and reach out to me via email (vargasgg@oregonstate.edu). Make sure this email includes the following: your CV. information for three professional references, a brief statement of your research interests and how they align with the work in the lab, describe your academic background, and long term career goals. If you feel unsure on how to craft that email, please check this website.

Prospective postdoctoral researchers: 

Please send me an email expressing your interests in the above mentioned topics in the context of ecological forecasting. This email should take the format of a cover letter with a brief description of your research background, one idea you have on how to develop ecological forecasting products to monitor vegetation responses to drought. We encourage you to propose approaches that leverage a variety of data types and explore novel research questions through model-data fusion across scales.