Biogeography Specialty Group Award Recipients
Student Research Grant Proposals
The BSG sponsors a grant competition each year to support student research in biogeography. Normally, awards are made to one master's student for $500 and one doctoral student for $1000 each year.  The criteria used for evaluating the applicants include the scientific merit of the proposed research, the soundness of the proposed methods and analyses, and the appropriateness of the budget items.  Applicants are also evaluated in terms of their past experience and their level of need.
 
2022 Ph.D. Anais Zimmer University of Texas-Austin "Human-environmental interactions in the deglaciating Alps and tropical Andes"
  Masters Corey Aldred University of Missouri-Columbia "Thirty years of change: visualizing hotter drought at upper treeline along the Colorado Trail "
2021 Ph.D. Clara Mosso Colorado State University "Urban expansion into native forest: Assessing impacts on fire risk and ecosystem services provision in San Martín de los Andes (Neuquén) and Aspen (Colorado)"
2020 Ph.D. Audrey Denvir University of Texas-Austin "Avocados bcome a global commodity: consequences for forest carbon"
  Masters Keon-Hak Lee Seoul National University "Ecological and geomorphological changes after radical coastal management in a temperate dune"
2019 Ph.D. Anais Zimmer University of Texas-Austin "Future of periglacial landscape: alpine ecosystems and deglaciation in the Tropical Andes and French Alps"
  Masters Sewon Ohr Seoul National University "Estimating the carbon sequestration capacity of a salt marsh of the Yellow sea using remote sensing and spatial interpolation"
2018 Ph.D. Jonathan Kleinman University of Alabama "Catastrophic wind and logging effects on plants and prescribed fire in pine woodlands"
  Masters Kristen Birdshire University of
Colorado-Denver		 "Influences on wild bee diversity and abundance along an urban-rural gradient”
2017 Ph.D. Maegen Rochner University of Tennessee-Knoxville "Critical physical geography of whitebark pine in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem"
2016 Masters Hanna Durick Texas A&M “Application of circuit theory to vegetation and terrain-based patterns of desert-elephant movements”
  Ph.D. Matthew Kerr University of Tennessee-Knoxville “Using a new proxy to separate drivers of vegetation and fire history in the neotropics”
2015 Ph.D. Stephani Michelson-Correa University of Washington "Tracing the fate of applied nitrogen in Douglas fir forests of Oregon and Washington"
2014 Masters Christopher Petrucelli University of Missouri “A multi-scale assessment of climate and slope aspect influences on upper treeline dynamics in the Rocky Mountains, USA”
Ph.D. Erik Johnason Univ. of Tennessee-Knoxville “Reconstructing late Holocene paleoenvironments and human-environment interactions from neotropical lake sediments in southern Pacific Costa Rica”
2013 Masters Elizabeth Schneider Univ. of Tennessee-Knoxville “Low-frequency climate drivers of wildfire activity, Magdalena Mountains, New Mexico”
Ph.D. Amanda Young Pennsylvania State Univ. “High elevation deciduous forest structure: a test of  William Bond's 'Slow Seeding Hypothesis' ”
2012 Masters Ellen Gass Texas A&M Univ. “Simulating historic landscape patterns of fire in the Southern Appalachian Mountains: Implications for fire history and management”
Ph.D. Megan Buchanan Univ. of  Minnesota “Drivers of the oak-maple transition across contrasting site types in southwestern Wisconsin”
2011 Masters Joshua Leisen Univ. of South Carolina “Effects of riverscape connectivity on fish metacommunity structure and turnover”
Ph.D. Michael Habberfield State Univ. of New York at Buffalo “Investigating the influence of pool and landscape features on the spatial dynamics of amphibian breeding in a vernal pool complex in central New York”
2010  Ph.D. Kimberly Meitzen Univ. of South Carolina “Hydrogeomorphology and vegetation ecology of abandoned meander wetlands in a large floodplain, South Carolina”
2009 Masters Yanan Li Univ. of Tennessee-Knoxville “The impact of oceanic-atmospheric-oscillations in the southeastern United States from a network of tree-ring data”
Ph.D. William Flatley Texas A&M Univ. “Implications of an altered fire regime for forest dynamics along a topographic gradient in the southern Appalachian Mountains”
2008 Masters Kerry Malm Univ. of Colorado-Boulder “Modeling mountain pine beetle phenology in northern Colorado and the potential impact of climate change”
Ph.D.  Jacquelyn Gill Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison “Counting spores from the dung fungus Sporormiella in archived pollen slides to reconstruct the spatiotemporal patterns and ecological context of the North American megafaunal extinction”
2007 Masters Sarah McLane Univ. of South Carolina “An integrated approach to modeling invasive species as a part of a watershed management partnership in the Kohala Mountains, Hawaii"
  PhD Daehyun Kim Texas A&M Univ. “Spatial zonation of vegetation on a salt marsh ecosystem: implications of micro-spatial scale processes and land use history”
Ph.D. Grant Elliott Univ. of Minnesota “Spatiotemporal influences of climate on upper treeline dynamics along a latitudinal gradient in the Rocky Mountains, USA”
2006 Masters Ranya Henson Univ. of Hawaii-Hilo “Genetic structure in the Hawaiian Intertidal Zone: Space, scale, and disturbance”
Ph.D. Scott Markwith Univ. of Georgia “Application of hydrologic modeling for investigating hydrochory in the aquatic macrophyte
2005 Masters Carla Vandervoort Univ. of Colorado-Boulder ""Geographic parthenogenesis: a case study of the distribution of Erigeron strigosus (Asteraceae) in Georgia, U.S." 
  Ph.D. C. Andres Holz Univ. of Colorado-Boulder "Forest decline in Patagonia: a multiscale approach"
Ph.D. Chad Lane Univ. of Tennessee-Knoxville "Late Holocene paleoenvironmental change in the Dominican Republic: Evidence from pollen, charcoal, and isotope stratigraphies of two small, mid-elevation lakes."
2004 Masters Evan Larson Univ. of Tennessee-Knoxville “Fire history at tree line in the Rocky Mountains of Montana using long-lived whitebark pine”
Ph.D. Kevin Anchukaitis Univ. of Arizona “A test of tropical isotope dendrochronology in montane cloud forests"
2003 Masters Joanne Stewart Univ. of Denver “Influence of landscape characteristics on spatial patterns of bats within riparian habitats on the Great Plains”
Ph.D. Chris Duvall Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison “Spatial assessment of chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus ) population and habitat in the Bafing protected areas, Mali”
2002 Masters Kathryn Hrinkevich Portland State Univ. “Forest edge dynamics in a naturally fragmented landscape”
Ph.D. Rosemary Sherriff Univ. of Colorado-Boulder “The historical range of variability of fire in the montane zone of the northern Colorado front range: past fire types and fire effects”
2001 Masters Karen Eisenhart Univ. of Colorado-Boulder “Historic range of variability and stand development in pinyon pine woodlands of western Colorado”
Ph.D. Matt Beaty Pennsylvania State Univ. “ Multiscale analysis of disturbance and vegetation dynamics in the central Sierra Nevada”
2000 Masters Kelly Pohl Portland State Univ. “Climatic variation and forest disturbance in Central Oregon”
  Ph.D. Kim Diver Syracuse Univ. “Biogeography of island flora in the Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, Ontario”
Ph.D. Mike Pisaric Queens Univ. “Tree line dynamics and the paleoecological history of the northern Rocky Mountains”
1999 Ph.D. Stacy Jorgensen Univ. of Georgia “ Evolutionary biogeography of the Hawaiian endemic Lipochaeta ”
1998 Masters Deborah Kurtz Montana State Univ. “Exotic species in Grand Teton National Park”
Ph.D. Charles Lafon Univ. of Tennessee-Knoxville “Ice storm effects on northeast forests”
1997 Masters Theresa Burscu Univ. of North Carolina “Remote biomass estimation of oak scrub, Kennedy Space Center, Florida”
Ph.D. Ginger Birkeland Arizona State Univ. “ Patternsof riparian vegetation and flood power along streams in south central Utah”
1996 Masters Ralph Campbell New Mexico State Univ. “A predictive GIS model of cougar habitat for the San Andreas Mountains”
Ph.D. Ricardo Grau Univ. of Colorado-Boulder “Disturbance and tree species diversity along the elevational gradient of a subtropical montane forest”
1995 Ph.D. Alison Arians Univ. of Colorado-Boulder “The impact of flood frequency, permafrost distribution, and climate variation on a northern treeline floodplain in Alaska”
1994 Masters Karen Borza Pennsylvania State Univ. “The role of fire in maintaining structural and compositional diversity in eastern serpentine ecosystems”
Ph.D. Alison Arians Univ. of Colorado-Boulder “Primary succession of latitudinal treeline spruce forests on arctic floodplains: Noatak National Preserve, Alaska”
1993 Masters Leslie Bolick San Diego State Univ. “Conservation of plants and birds at Mount Talau, Vava, United Kingdom of Tonga”
Ph.D. David Cairns Univ. of Iowa “Simulation modeling of treeline in Glacier National Park”
1992 Ph.D. John Kupfer Univ. of Iowa “Effects of edge vegetation on interior gap successional processes”