Studying in the Silman Lab

The lab takes graduate students on a broad range of topics centered on forests and forest conservation, mainly in the tropics. What unites us is a strong committment to understanding problems with real-world applications, and an understanding that the forest is more than just a trees. Our recent work has centered on understanding forest ecology and species responses to climate changes along an Andes-to-Amazon gradient in Peru using approaches ranging from paleoecology to remote sensing to experiemental field ecology and plant ecophysiology.

Students coming to the lab will not only have access to an excellent set of ecologists on the faculty here at Wake Forest University, but will also be embedded in a family of world class researchers in the Andes Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group (ABERG).

IWe are also working in applied ecology on topics such as using bamboo biochar to enhance productivity in tropical soils, carbon assessment and novel sensor networks to help REDD+ projects, and restoration of lands degraded by gold mining in Peru.

If you like wild places and have a committment to doing the field ecology necessary to understand them and ultimately save them, come join us.

PhD Student The Silman Lab is currently seeking a doctoral student to conduct research as part of the NSF-funded project  "Understanding range limits and plant migration in response to climate change in neotropical montane forests" (in collaboration with P. Meir and K. Feeley).