Heath W GarrisAu Sable Institute
Heath W Garris
PhD in Integrated Bioscience
About
33
Publications
43,276
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665
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
I am the Director of College Programs at the Au Sable Institute, Mancelona, Michigan. I work in Ecology, Geography, and Molecular Biology to address questions that transcend these disciplines. This includes fine-scale remote sensing of local processes and field experiments to inform landscape-level modeling. I have a background in ecotoxicology, vegetation science, and statistical forecast models and I am eager to collaborate on synthetic, global, transdisciplinary projects.
Additional affiliations
July 2016 - present
Position
- Professor (Assistant)
Description
- I am an Assistant Professor of Ecology at Covenant College and campus representative for the Au Sable Institute.
December 2014 - April 2016
Position
- Instructor
Description
- Course instructor for ENVS5200:Conducting Science, a master’s level course within the Natural Resource Sciences MSc Program core curriculum. Course content available at http://envs5200.wordpress.com
June 2014 - April 2016
Education
August 2008 - December 2013
July 2006 - May 2008
August 2002 - May 2006
Publications
Publications (33)
We investigated the impacts of the Mount Polley tailings impoundment failure on chemical, physical, and microbial properties of substrates within the affected watershed, comprised of 70 hectares of riparian wetlands and 40 km of stream and lake shore. We established a biomonitoring network in October of 2014, two months following the disturbance, a...
Reduced precipitation treatments often are used in field experiments to explore the effects of drought on plant productivity and species composition. However, in seasonally snow-covered regions reduced precipitation also reduces snow cover, which can increase soil frost depth, decrease minimum soil temperatures and increase soil freeze–thaw cycles....
Mine reclamation succeeds when healthy, self-sustaining ecosystems develop on previously mined lands. Regulations require reclamation of ecosystem services; however, there are few specified targets, and those that are presented are vague. Sequencing genomic DNA and transcribed RNA from environmental samples may provide critical supportive informati...
Shifting precipitation patterns brought on by climate change threaten to alter the future distribution of wetlands. We developed a set of models to understand the role climate plays in determining wetland formation on a landscape scale and to forecast changes in wetland distribution for the Midwestern United States. These models combined 35 climate...
Ecological restoration projects have traditionally focused on vegetation as both a means (seeding, planting, and substrate amendments) and ends (success based upon primary productivity and vegetation diversity). This vegetation-centric approach to ecological restoration stems from an historic emphasis on esthetics and cost but provides a limited me...
https://invasionmodels.wordpress.com/
Plant species continue to be moved outside of their native range by human activities. Here, we aim to determine whether, once introduced, plants assimilate into native communities or whether they aggregate, thus forming mosaics of native‐ and alien‐rich communities. Alien species might aggregate in their non‐native range owing to shared habitat pre...
The neonicotinoid systemic insecticide imidacloprid has proven to be an effective treatment for the prevention and control of hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae Annand) in southeastern populations of eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis L.). Recent studies have demonstrated that imidacloprid and A. tsugae both stimulate salicylic acid-dependent ph...
Transect origination coordinates are provided below for the 60 sites (in decimal degree format) with date, local (Pacific Standard) time of day (TOD) and site ID codes for the biomonitoring network.
(PDF)
Correlation of soil moisture and organic matter contents.
SOM–soil organic matter. Linear (green) and 2nd order polynomial (red) contours are included.
(PDF)
Soil organic matter (g/kg) content of samples collected from all three layers depicted according to geographical location.
Point size reflects Soil organic matter content (g/kg).
(PDF)
Species richness (sobs) in Polley Lake microbiomes.
Point size reflects relative species richness (estimated as number of distinct OTUs).
(PDF)
Chemistry of the sediment layer pore water.
Major water bodies are labelled as follows: BJL = Bootjack Lake, HAZ = Hazeltine Creek, POL = Polley Lake, QUE = Quesnel Lake.
(PDF)
Landscape-scale distribution of OTU1.
Relative abundance (% of total bacterial read counts) is expressed for the three sample types.
(PDF)
Boxplots of SOM (g/kg) contents measures at all sites compared across layers and habitats.
(PDF)
Pore water pH, dissolved oxygen (mg/L) and conductivity (μS/cm).
Box-whisker plots reflect medians, quartiles and outliers by lake/stream.
(PDF)
Water quality metric means ± standard error.
Fields in grey marked with (—) yielded insufficient data for reliable comparisons (<4 observations).
(PDF)
Plant traits affect the success or failure of plants to establish, grow, and reproduce. Although we have an increased understanding of certain individual plant traits and their relative effects on performance and fitness, it is a challenge to predict relative similarity of traits between neighbouring plants. Assembly rules suggest that abiotic filt...
Tredennick et al. criticize one of our statistical analyses and emphasize the low explanatory power of models relating productivity to diversity. These criticisms do not detract from our key findings, including evidence consistent with the unimodal constraint relationship predicted by the humped-back model and evidence of scale sensitivities in the...
The search for predictions of species diversity across environmental gradients has challenged ecologists for decades. The humped-back model (HBM) suggests that plant diversity peaks at intermediate productivity; at low productivity few species can tolerate the environmental stresses, and at high productivity a few highly competitive species dominat...
For the majority of mines, closure succeeds when healthy, self‐sustaining ecosystems develop on previously mined lands. In British Columbia, Canada, the regulations require reclamation of ecosystems; however, there are few specified targets, and those that are presented are vague. Genomics technologies may provide the key to both understanding the...
Mathematical modeling is used to investigate control of the invasive aquatic plant Myriophyllum spicatum L. by the native watermilfoil weevil Euhrychiopsis lecontei Dietz. An age-structured population model with discrete development class is used to separate the destructive activity of
Euhrychiopsis lecontei Dietz larvae from the relatively benign...
Phototactic behavior toward ultraviolet light varies among nocturnal flying insects. By recording sex ratios of 28 southeastern US moth species, we tested the commonly held belief that UV light-trap collections of moths are significantly skewed toward males. Twelve species demonstrated a statistically significant male preponderance, but a wide rang...
Zebrafish (Danio rerio) skeletal bone possesses properties similar to human bone, which suggests that they may be used as a model to study mineralization characteristics of the human Haversian system, as well as human bone diseases. One prerequisite for the use of zebrafish as an alternative osteoporotic bone model is to determine whether their bon...
The need to develop standardized diets to support zebrafish (Danio rerio) research is supported by the knowledge that specific dietary ingredients, nutrients, or antinutritional factors in diets have been shown to affect development and growth of adult D. rerio and their offspring. In this study, there were seven dietary treatments consisting of fi...
Questions
Questions (3)
Microbial community distributions are reported to be extremely patchy (even within a kg of soil). Are there spatial scales (1m? 1km?) for which taking a representative sample would be untenable logistically?
I'm teaching a research design course for Master's students in Environmental Science and I thought I would cast a wider net than my own experience (ecology) for ideas on pertinent readings for discussion.
The main course goals are to facilitate innovative research and effective scientific writing and it would be best to use examples that illustrate how basic research informs public policy, economics, social interactions, etc...
Any recommendations (self-promotion is welcomed) would be greatly appreciated.
I work a lot with Landsat data, but am by no means an expert. I suspect many researchers would find it useful to query the landsat scene database for reflectance values for an array of points without going through the steps of downloading tiles and then processing them individually in Arc. Has anyone found (or written) code or an efficient workflow that does this?
Ideally, one should be able to use the solution to download selected band reflectance values (either coincident or averaged for a small area) into a spreadsheet with over 100 points from multiple time-points and for multiple tiles.
Projects
Projects (2)
We are using a globally distributed experiment to test the generality of McDougall and Turkington's 'passenger' and 'driver' models for invasive species. i.e. What fraction of invasive species are essentially mislabeled symptoms of ongoing ecosystem-level change?
https://invasionmodels.wordpress.com/
