Steve Travers, assistant professor of biological sciences, was invited to participate with a working group at the Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, Calif. The center's mission is to fund (through the National Science Foundation) and facilitate collaboration of scientists from different specialties, universities, agencies and countries to work on ecological issues from a diverse perspective.
Travers’ working group consists of approximately 20 scientists including climatologists, remote-sensing ecologists, informatics specialists, phylogeneticists and biologists. The team is analyzing existing data and literature from a variety of conceptual areas to study plant phenology (the timing of life history events, such as flowering) and climate change. Their goal is to examine all the possible variables that could be influencing how natural plant communities are responding to global climate change.
The group met for a week this fall and will meet again in spring 2011 with the goal of producing multiple papers on their findings.