Untitled Document

Overview:

I've terminated my theoretical ecology research (read below), and begun a new path surrounding environmental topics. Right now I'm writing a book (working title: "What good are urban trees?") on urban ecology and ecosystem services in cities, linking urban heat islands, air and water quality, asthma and other health problems, global warming, energy and carbon footprints, and social equity issues. Check that work out here. Below I cover how one research program began and ended, and a new one came to be.

Death of Research Program:
I fully committed my research efforts to ecological theory, but the lack of resources over the last decade, I feel, forced me to terminate primary research. Working through that unwilling termination of a scientific commitment takes time, at least for me, and this webpage changes from time-to-time as I grow less emotionally committed to the discipline of theoretical ecology. As that commitment dims, so will expressions of disappointment.

Birth of a Research Program: As I recall, sometime around 1968 I decided to be a scientist. In 1978, I graduated from high school, with big interests in computer programming and physics. In 1988, I earned my Physics Ph.D. at the University of Hawai'i for my work studying phase transition models within the subfield of condensed matter theory. In 1998, I was awarded my one and only NSF research grant to understand theoretical mechanisms behind digging and grazing foraging strategies. In 2008, as a tenured Associate Professor of Biology at Duke University, and after a decade of grant proposal rejections and no new financial support, I've terminated my research on theoretical evolutionary ecology. I don't know what 2018 will bring.

Although theory is cheap, it isn't free. A scientist --- even a theoretical ecologist --- needs research funds to attend meetings and have an active lab that supports a vibrant collection of students and postdocs. Programs that might fund my research sit primarily within the National Science Foundation, but funding rates in these programs hover around six to eight percent. Although I've had a thrilling (in a nerdy sort of way) run of research projects and collaborators on a shoestring budget, even the shoestring's been cut. In any event, with no hope for support to reconstitute an active, original-research program on the $300/year available to me, I've terminated my theoretical ecology and evolution studies. I've had no funding since 2001, and after a dozen or so proposal rejections over the last decade (as well as publishing some 30+ scientific papers and a book), I've finally accepted the notion that these research interests have no funding potential. I'm not exactly sure why I can't get funding. I have several hypotheses spanning mechanistic levels from my own abilities to commercialized universities up to national priorities during the Bush years. However, dwelling on past problems does not lead to a constructive future.

I look back and remain proud of my commitment to the discipline, and the work I did, and am pleased with the understanding I've gained. As this research program ends, and I begin to take its demise less personally, I might write an article on its death for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Perhaps.

New Academic Focus: I'm moving on. My new motto is "Make Valuable Commitments." A tenured faculty position, with its academic freedom and security, represents a wonderful opportunity to change directions and study new things. Tenured faculty have the academic freedom to pursue one's own interests and sense of social importance. With this freedom, I want to make commitments that have value, either personally or socially. Looking back, theoretical ecology research had great personal value through my own fascination, but as I sated that fascination, the lack of value of ecology to our national science priorities, and of theoretical questions to the ecological community, revealed through the lack of funding, became clear.

Looking forward, there are many environmental problems that deserve commitments. (It would be somehow satisfying if a "War on Science" pushed scientists out of research and into environmental and social activism!) Over the last few years, my service on the Durham City/County Open Space and Trails Commission (follow the links on my main page) posed interesting questions concerning urban ecology. These questions have value to society, whether society knows it or not, making them a valuable commitment. I'm following those interests academically, and I've placed here information and links to literature from an "ecosystem services" seminar I led. Over the last year I drafted a book, "What good are urban trees?", and I hope it informs students and environmentalists on issues related to urban open space. It provides quite a technical foundation to the function of urban trees, urban ecosystem services perhaps, and I've started a web site you can find through my links. As time goes on I'll make more and more information available there. The University of Chicago Press offered me a contract for the book's publication (it's presently in review), and I hope it will come out in 2009. Of course, I still have no funding, but I'm doing what I can without it and, I hope, making commitments with value even without funding. In particular, I'm very interested in serving on boards and commissions with environmental concerns and important missions.

Here's some more details of my research life after my Ph.D.:
Starting in 1988 I spent five enjoyable years at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. There I developed research interests with various collaborators: 1) fluid flow through porous media problems with Bill Laidlaw; 2) seismic image enhancement with Kris Vasudevan; 3) spatial predator-prey theory with Ed McCauley and Andre de Roos; and 4) floral evolution with Lawrence Harder.

I then went to the University of California at Santa Barbara to work with Roger Nisbet. Interactions with Roger, Russ Schmitt, and Craig Osenberg, laid the foundation of my present work on resouce-consumer models.

I then gained a faculty position in the Department of Zoology (now Biology) at Duke University in 1996 with a position offered through the Center for Nonlinear and Complex Systems.

My interests span theoretical evolutionary ecology, and my approaches include both mathematics and individual-based simulation models. Along these lines I've examined a variety of single- and multiple-species systems to understand how spatial extensions affect population-level dynamics. An ongoing interest is the connection of theoretical and empirical systems.

Specific topics I'm working on include (as of 3/1/01): resource-consumer interactions (with several collaborators); animal grouping; hermaphroditism-dioecy mating system models (with L. Harder); obligate mutualism-exploiter systems (with W. Morris and J. Bronstein).

5/20/2009