Rosenberg Institute Seminar Series - Stephanie Pau

Stephanie Pau, Associate Professor, Geography and Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley

Investigating grassland biodiversity with eyes in the sky and boots on the ground

Abstract: Human civilization depends on grasses for food, fuel, and fiber. The grass family (Poaceae) is one of the most diverse plant families with over 11,500 species and contains a high degree of evolutionary and ecological variation. To predict ecological responses at broad environmental scales, grass species are commonly grouped into two broad functional types based on photosynthetic pathway. However, closely related species may have distinctive anatomical and physiological traits that influence ecological responses, beyond those related to photosynthetic pathway alone. In this talk I will show recent work demonstrating how phylogenetic lineages capture similarities in grass traits better than photosynthetic pathway with implications for identifying useful functional types for predicting ecological responses. I will discuss the opportunities and challenges for using hyperspectral remote sensing (i.e., spectroscopy), which provides a rapid method of assessing plant traits across environmental gradients, for understanding the grass functional types. Finally, I will end by briefly discussing new work at a California rangeland. 

Bio: Stephanie Pau is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Geography and Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley. Her research leverages remote sensing observations to understand plant interactions with their environment, and the role of biodiversity and plant traits in ecosystem functions. She received her PhD from UCLA, after which she was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis. She was faculty at Florida State University for ten years before coming back to California, her home state, in January 2024.