My doctoral research focused on the application of vegetation models for evaluating issues of plant diversity on different spatial and temporal scales. A forest gap model was used to simulate climate-induced forest succession in Scandinavia over the past 1500 years to: (1) highlight the importance of land-use change in promoting the current dominance of Fagus (at the expense of Tilia) in northwest Europe, and (2) to provide a framework for future forest management protocols.

Additional theoretical research was conducted using a global vegetation model to investigate the relevance of last glacial maximum changes in
vegetation composition versus structure for explaining modern patterns of biodiversity in the lowland Amazon, as well as vegetation patterns in glacial North America.

The final article in my thesis advocates the significance of changes in plant carbon balance for explaining changes in plant diversity over geological time-scales.

More information can be found at:

http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~cowling/