Specialty
Forest Ecologist Principal Investigator, Senior Scientist
Phone
443-482-2210 Research Labs
Staff Profile
Biography
McGill University (B Sc. In Biology)
University of Virginia (MS. In Environmental Sciences)
University of Georgia (Ph. D. in Ecology)
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies (postdoctoral fellow)
Geoffrey (‘Jess’) Parker has been the forest ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in Edgewater, Md., since 1987. His research interests concern the structure and function of forest ecosystems at long temporal and large spatial scales, in the canopies of forests, the spatial relationships of forest trees, and in comparative forest ecology. An organizing theme of the majority of studies has been the interaction between the structure of the forest canopy and: 1.) exchanges of material and energy with the atmospheric boundary layer, 2.) forest microclimates, and 3.) biotic habitats. He is currently involved in a variety of LIDAR-based studies of forest structure, eddy covariance-based measures of forest functions, and biometrically-based studies of forest carbon budgets.
Publications
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(2023). Diverse anthropogenic disturbances shift Amazon forests along a structural spectrum . Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 21 (1) , 24-32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/fee.2590
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(2021). ForestGEO: Understanding forest diversity and dynamics through a global observatory network. Biological Conservation, 253 , 108907-108907. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108907
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(2021). Mycorrhizal type influences plant density dependence and species richness across 15 temperate forests. Ecology, 102 (3) , e03259. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3259
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(2021). The evolution of macrosystems biology . Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 19 (1) , 11-19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/fee.2288
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(2020). Tamm review: Leaf Area Index (LAI) is both a determinant and a consequence of important processes in vegetation canopies . Forest Ecology and Management, 477 , 118496-118496. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2020.118496
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(2019). Persistent effects of fragmentation on tropical rainforest canopy structure after 20 yr of isolation . Ecological Applications, 29 (6) , e01952. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/eap.1952
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(2019). On promoting the use of lidar systems in forest ecosystem research . Forest Ecology and Management, 450 , 117484-117484. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2019.117484
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(2019). Consequences of environmental heterogeneity for the photosynthetic light environment of a tropical forest . Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 278 , Article 107661. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2019.107661
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(2018). Long-term (33 years) rainfall and runoff dynamics in a tropical dry forest ecosystem in western Mexico: Management implications under extreme hydrometeorological events . Forest Ecology and Management, 426 , 7-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2017.09.040
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(2018). Resilience of tropical dry forest productivity to two hurricanes of different intensity in western Mexico . Forest Ecology and Management, 426 , 53-60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2018.02.024
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(2018). Effects of hurricane disturbance on a tropical dry forest canopy in western Mexico . Forest Ecology and Management, 426 , 39-52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2017.11.037
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(2017). Canopy gradients in leaf functional traits for species that differ in growth strategies and shade tolerance . Tree physiology, 37 (10) , 1415-1425. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/treephys/tpx048
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(2017). What is the Point? Evaluating the Structure, Color, and Semantic Traits of Computer Vision Point Clouds of Vegetation . Remote Sensing, 9 (4) , 355. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs9040355
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(2015). CTFS-ForestGEO: a worldwide network monitoring forests in an era of global change . Global Change Biology, 21 (2) , 528-549. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.12712
