Helen Poulos ‘07 Ph.D.

Wesleyan University

Helen Poulos’ research examines the effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbances on plant community structure and function. Her work focuses on quantifying local-, landscape-, and regional-scale environmental influences forest pattern and stand structure across the southwestern North America. Poulos’ work is applied and it focuses on providing decision support tools to environmental managers for maintaining sustainable vegetation structures for large landscape conservation. She has published over 30 scholarly works and popular publications and she continues to work across the region and elsewhere in North America investigating how large-scale disturbances shape the future trajectories of plant communities that are experiencing increasingly chronic disturbances.

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Drew Barton

University of Maine - Farmington

Drew Barton is a forest ecologist and science writer.  His research focuses on the response of forests to changing climate and wildfire regimes.  His fieldwork has taken him across the U.S. and to Costa Rica, and he is the author of over 30 scholarly and popular publications.  He is the lead author of the recent book, The Changing Nature of the Maine Woods and, co-editor, with Bill Keeton, of the upcoming Eastern Old-growth Forests: Ecology and Recovery in a Rapidly Changing World, from Island Press.  Drew is a co-founder of the Michigan National Forest Watch organization, the Mt. Blue-Tumbledown Conservation Alliance, and the UMF Sustainable Campus Coalition (SCC).  He received his bachelor’s degree from Brown University and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and is currently Professor of Biology at the University of Maine at Farmington.