Jeffrey D. Corbin

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at Union College

Despite decades of research documenting the consequences of naturalized and invasive plant species on ecosystem functions, our understanding of the functional underpinnings of these changes remains rudimentary. This is partially due to ineffective scaling of trait differences between native and naturalized species to whole plant communities.Working...

Aim Native biodiversity is threatened by the spread of non‐native invasive species. Many studies demonstrate that invasions reduce local biodiversity but we lack an understanding of how impacts vary across environments at the macroscale. Using ~11,500 vegetation surveys from ecosystems across the United States, we quantified how the relationship be...

Reframing climate change education around a message of “hopeful alarm” not only will underscore the threats we face but will also show students how they can act to shape the future.

Small habitat patches can be important reservoirs for biodiversity, capable of hosting unique species that are largely absent from the surrounding landscape. In cases where such patches owe their existence to the presence of particular soil types or hydrologic conditions, local-scale edaphic variables may be more effective components for models tha...

Aim Non‐native plants have the potential to harm ecosystems. Harm is classically related to their distribution and abundance, but this geographical information is often unknown. Here, we assess geographical commonness as a potential indicator of invasive status for non‐native flora in the United States. Geographical commonness could inform invasion...

Aim Beta diversity quantifies the similarity of ecological assemblages. Its increase, known as biotic homogenisation, can be a consequence of biological invasions. However, species occurrence (presence/absence) and abundance‐based analyses can produce contradictory assessments of the magnitude and direction of changes in beta diversity. Previous wo...

Restoration practice is often predicated on the expectation that treated ecosystems will proceed predictably toward specific targets. However, persistent influences of conditions present before restoration action is initiated can influence the direction of ecosystem development toward one or more alternative pathways. Such “legacies” of land use, e...

Street trees are known to provide a variety of services to the public. Understanding the makeup of the street tree community, and therefore the extent of those services, requires a consideration of past policies that contributed to the patterns we see today. Inequities in environmental conditions in US cities, including access to street trees, has...

Invasive species science has focused heavily on the invasive agent. However, management to protect native species also requires a proactive approach focused on resident communities and the features affecting their vulnerability to invasion impacts. Vulnerability is likely the result of factors acting across spatial scales, from local to regional, a...

The movement of plant species across the globe exposes native communities to new species introductions. While introductions are pervasive, two aspects of variability underlie patterns and processes of biological invasions at macroecological scales. First, only a portion of introduced species become invaders capable of substantially impacting ecosys...

Root hemiparasitic plants both compete with and extract resources from host plants. By reducing the abundance of dominant plants and releasing subordinates from competitive exclusion, they can have an outsized impact on plant communities. Most research on the ecological role of hemiparasites is manipulative and focuses on a small number of hemipara...

Pine barren and sandplain ecosystems are unique, globally rare ecosystems whose open-canopied vegetation structure supports a unique assemblage of plants and animals. They occur almost exclusively on deep, sandy soils, and require periodic disturbances to prevent succession to forest. Though these ecosystems, and the unique species that live in the...

When analyzing biotic resistance/diversity‐invasibility, including predictors of species richness may result in a false negative correlation between native and non‐native richness. However, reanalysis of vegetation surveys shows that the negative effect of native richness is statistically significant whether or not predictors of species richness ar...

Suggestions of future directions of research and management of California grasslands

Cuba – a large, habitat‐rich island that has cultivated economic self‐sufficiency – is tethered between contrasting predictions of non‐native species diversity. A high capacity for colonization is prognosticated by its biogeography; muted introduction of organisms is predicted by its low dependence on imports and tourism, as economic openness is un...

This spring, instructors moved their courses online in an emergency fashion as campuses were closed due to the pandemic. As colleges prepare for the next academic year, there is a need to provide flexible instruction that is more intentional for quality online learning. We taught two undergraduate courses online for the first time this spring and s...

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are known to serve crucial functions in many arid and semiarid habitats, but less is understood about biocrusts in temperate biomes, where they are often widespread and can play important roles in aboveground and belowground processes. Because the distinctive conditions that support biocrusts in temperate biomes –...

This spring, instructors moved their courses online in an emergency fashion as campuses were closed due to the pandemic. As colleges prepare for the next academic year, there is a need to provide flexible instruction that is more intentional for quality online learning. We taught two undergraduate courses online for the first time this spring and s...

The biotic resistance hypothesis predicts that diverse native communities are more resistant to invasion. However, past studies vary in their support for this hypothesis due to an apparent contradiction between experimental studies, which support biotic resistance, and observational studies, which find that native and non‐native species richness ar...

Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are known to affect plants’ germination and seedling establishment in arid ecosystems, but their ecological role in more mesic climates is not so well-known. We tested the effects of moss-crusted versus uncrusted soils on seed germination dynamics in a temperate pine barren ecosystem. We conducted a 35-day laboratory a...

Seed germination data file. (CSV)

Metadata for S1 File. Description of S1 File data organization. (TXT)

Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are known to affect plants’ germination and seedling establishment in arid ecosystems, but their ecological role in more mesic climates is not so well-known. We tested the effects of moss-crusted versus uncrusted soils on seed germination dynamics in a temperate pine barren ecosystem. We conducted a 35-day laboratory a...

Aims: Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are known to affect plants’ germination and seedling establishment in arid ecosystems, but their ecological role in more mesic climates is not so well-known. We tested the effects of moss-crusted versus uncrusted soils on seed germination dynamics in a temperate pine barren ecosystem. Methods: We conducted a 35-d...

Projects that aim to control invasive species often assume that a reduction of the target species will increase native species abundance. However, reports of the responses of native species following exotic species control are relatively rare. We assessed the recovery of the native community in five tidal wetland locations in which we attempted to...

Aims - Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are known to affect plants’ germination and seedling establishment, but the ecological role of BSCs in more mesic climates are not so well-known. We tested the effects of moss-crusted versus uncrusted soils on seed germination dynamics in a temperate pine barren ecosystem. Methods - We conducted a 35-day laborat...

Aims - Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are known to affect plants’ germination and seedling establishment, but the ecological role of BSCs in more mesic climates are not so well-known. We tested the effects of moss-crusted versus uncrusted soils on seed germination dynamics in a temperate pine barren ecosystem. Methods - We conducted a 35-day laborat...

Given the difficulty that habitat managers face in controlling invasive species, assessing a project's feasibility before implementation can be a useful exercise. We describe efforts to eradicate a population of garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) from an area of the Adirondack Park, United States. We applied a retrospective assessment of the feasi...

Background/Question/Methods Non-native nitrogen-fixing plants are a particular threat to ecosystems because of their capacity to alter soil nutrient cycles. Even after they have been removed, nitrogen pools and/or rates of N cycling may remain elevated – a “legacy” of invasion that outlives the plants’ presence. It remains unresolved how long such...

Applied nucleation is a restoration technique that seeks to facilitate woody-plant establishment by attracting birds or other animals that may introduce seeds of dispersal-limited species. In 1991, an experimental test of applied nucleation was initiated in an abandoned landfill in New Jersey, USA. Trees and shrubs were planted into 16 10 × 10 m pl...

Applied nucleation is a restoration technique that seeks to facilitate woody-plant establishment by attracting birds or other animals that may introduce seeds of dispersal-limited species. In 1991, an experimental test of applied nucleation was initiated in an abandoned landfill in New Jersey, USA. Trees and shrubs were planted into 16 10 × 10 m pl...

Background / Purpose: Online carbon footprint and ecological footprint calculators can be useful to demonstrate how students' lifestyle choices impact their energy use and contribution to climate change. Main conclusion: Students gained a broader knowledge of how their personal actions impact the environment. http://f1000.com/posters/browse/...

Restoration science, like all applied sciences, includes a significant social component in its study and practice. What individual or societal choices in the past led to a need for intervention? Which habitats, of the myriad in need of attention, are targets for restoration efforts? And what goals do practitioners choose in order to guide their cho...

Book Review of Hobbs et al. 2013: Novel Ecosystems: Intervening in the new ecological world order

Question Relationships between species richness and environmental drivers such as productivity and disturbance are sensitive to the scale over which they are measured, but the extent to which this scale‐dependence is important for experimental studies conducted over small scale ranges is not well known. We ask whether the response of species richne...

Although 97%-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field accept the basic tenets of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) findings [Anderegg et al., 2010], there is a consistent undercurrent of doubt among the general public (A. Leiserowitz et al., Global warming's six Americas in May 2011, online report, 5...

The widespread recognition that nonnative plants can have significant biological and economic effects on the habitats they invade has led to a variety of strategies to remove them. Removal alone, however, is often not sufficient to allow the restoration of altered communities or ecosystems. The invasive plant's effects may persist after its removal...

The pace of deforestation worldwide has necessitated the development of strategies that restore forest cover quickly and efficiently. We review one potential strategy, applied nucleation, which involves planting small patches of trees as focal areas for recovery. Once planted, these patches, or nuclei, attract dispersers and facilitate establishmen...

Background/Question/Methods The pace of deforestation worldwide has necessitated the development of strategies that restore forest cover quickly and efficiently. One such strategy is applied nucleation, which involves planting small patches of trees as focal areas for recovery. Once planted, these patches, or nuclei, attract dispersers and facili...

Soil nitrogen (N) transformations have been shown to be influenced by plant community composition. Identifying species traits that control nitrogen dynamics is more straightforward when species dramatically differ in N input via litter (e.g., N-fixing invaders in a non-fixing community) or in litter carbon:N or lignin:N ratios. Cases where invaders...

Restoration ecology can benefit greatly from developments in trait-based ecology that enable improved predictions of how the composition of plant communities will respond to changes in environmental conditions. Plant functional traits can be used to guide the restoration of degraded habitats by closely tailoring treatments to the local species pool...

Invasive plants have often been shown to possess novel traits such as the ability to fix nitrogen, access unused resource pools, or the ability to exude allelopathic chemicals. We describe a case of a successful invasion where the native and non-native species are very similar in most life-history characteristics including their growth forms, lifes...

The relationship between native and exotic species richness may be highly context-dependent. Spatial scale, including both plot size (grain) and study area (extent), is likely to influence this relationship, as are environmental conditions such as resource availability and disturbance intensity. We used experimental manipulations of soil fertility...

Early emergence of plant seedlings can offer strong competitive advantages over later-germinating neighbors through the preemption of limiting resources. This phenomenon may have contributed to the persistent dominance of European annual grasses over native perennial grasses in California grasslands, since the former species typically germinate ear...

Early emergence of plant seedlings can offer strong competitive advantages over later-germi-nating neighbors through the preemption of limiting resources. This phenomenon may have contributed to the persistent dominance of European annual grasses over native perennial grasses in California grasslands, since the former species typically germinate ea...

Despite the biological, social, and physical challenges that exist in urban creek restorations, there are opportunities to effectively involve local residents in ecological rehabilitation projects. An urban riparian restoration project along Strawberry Creek (Berkeley, CA) began with the goal of removing exotic vegetation and restoring native plant...

We measured spatial and temporal patterns of seed dispersal and seedling recruitment for 58 species in a grassland community to test whether seed dispersal could predict patterns of invasion after disturbance. For the 12 most abundant grasses, recruitment of native species was dependent on the propagule supply of both native and exotic species. Var...

This chapter examines competitive interactions in California grasslands, first presenting the major components of grassland communities, including descriptions of their phenology and growth strategies. It then describes how various life-history characteristics affect growth and survival and the interactions between species. Finally, the chapter con...

This concluding chapter presents future directions for research on California grassland species and ecosystems. Future research areas that might be particularly dynamic are those with applications to managing grasslands for the multiple values we gain from them. These include impacts of global environmental change on grassland ecosystems, the impor...

This chapter explores the Pleistocene and pre-European evidence of grass dynamics, and describes pollen sequences documenting local and regional vegetation change. These include: (1) the three-million-year sequence from Tulelake on the eastern edge of the Modoc Plateau in northeastern California; (2) pollen sequence from Owens Lake on the lower por...

This chapter identifies the ecological factors that influence the availability of water to California grasslands, including abiotic and biotic influences, and describes the extent to which soil water availability varies temporally, spatially, and as the species traits of the vegetation community change. The influence of climatic conditions, includi...

Grasslands are one of California's most important ecosystems in terms of both biodiversity and economic value. Bringing together the large amount of research conducted in recent years on California's grasslands, this comprehensive, state-of-the-art sourcebook addresses the pressing need to understand this unique habitat. Providing a summary of curr...

Ecology and management of grasslands in California

The invasion of European perennial grasses represents a new threat to the native coastal prairie of northern California. Many coastal prairie sites also experience anthropogenic nitrogen (N) deposition or increased N availability as a result of invasion by N-fixing shrubs. We tested the hypothesis that greater seedling competitive ability and great...

Plants in the Mediterranean climate region of California typically experience summer drought conditions, but correlations between zones of frequent coastal fog inundation and certain species' distributions suggest that water inputs from fog may influence species composition in coastal habitats. We sampled the stable H and O isotope ratios of water...

Ecosystem ecologists and restoration practitioners have become increasingly interested in the effects that invading species might have on soil processes. Invading species, particularly ones that differ from native species in traits that are likely to influence soil processes, may influence nitrogen cycling to such an extent that the legacy of the i...

As exotic species increasingly threaten native biodiversity, habitat managers have turned to a variety of tools designed to increase the efficiency of plantrestoration projects. These efforts include eliminating exotic competitors through mechanical removal, herbicide application, or fire, and increasing native species' competitiveness relative to...

We are living in the early stages of a looming worldwide extinction crisis. Abundant evidence shows that the current rate of species extinctions is nearing its highest level since the asteroid collision 65 million years ago, and that humans are largely responsible. This book addresses the urgent need to understand and find solutions to this crisis....

There is growing interest in the addition of carbon (C) as sucrose or sawdust to the soil as a tool to reduce plant- available nitrogen (N) and alter competitive interactions among species. The hypothesis that C addition changes N availability and thereby changes competitive dynamics between natives and exotics was tested in a California grassland...

The impacts of increased nitrogen (N) inputs into temperate ecosystems via atmospheric nitrogen deposition on nitrogen cycling and nitrogen retention have been described in a variety of ecosystem types. The role of secondary nutrients such as phosphorus (P) in ecosystem responses to increased N inputs is less well-understood. N and P availability a...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1998. Includes bibliographical references.

Though established populations of invasive species can exert substantial competitive effects on native populations, exotic propagules may require disturbances that decrease competitive interference by resident species in order to become established. We compared the relative competitiveness of native perennial and exotic annual grasses in a Californ...