news & press

Edvard Munch — The Sun, 1911, Munch Museum Oslo
The Sun — Edvard Munch, 1911–1916. Munch Museum, Oslo. Public domain. Every photon captured by a leaf is the entry point of energy into the biosphere — powering metabolism, building structure, and driving the flows that sustain life from cell to ecosystem. Munch's radiating sun is not just a painterly gesture: it is the literal engine of the living world. The lab's work traces how that solar energy moves — from photosynthesis to plant growth, from individual organisms to forest canopies, from local communities to global patterns of biodiversity — and how its disruption under climate change is reshaping life on Earth.

Climate Change & Biodiversity

From dryland cacti to boreal canopies - how species and ecosystems respond to a warming, drying world.

Forest Conservation & Carbon

Forests as climate infrastructure - quantifying the carbon value of protected lands and the cost of their loss.

Scaling & Functional Ecology

Why bigger is more efficient - and how universal rules govern the organization of life across size, metabolism, and biome.

Biodiversity Informatics & BIEN

Building the data infrastructure to track, model, and forecast plant life across the Americas and beyond.

Science Culture & Synthesis

On the future of interdisciplinary science - and the case for reconnecting ecology's empirical, theoretical, and informatics traditions.