Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge
Researcher’s Biographical Sketches
2008
Dr. Mahdi Al-Kaisi joined the faculty in the Department of Agronomy at Iowa State University in April 2000. He is an Associate Professor and Extension Soil and Water Management Specialist. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from North Dakota State University in Soil Physics. Previously he was with the Colorado State University as an Extension Water quality Specialist. Dr. Al-Kaisi provides statewide leadership for extension soil and water management in Iowa. His research focus is the study of conservation systems, tillage and implication management on yield response and soil carbon dynamics, and their interaction with soil and water quality.
Dr. Heidi Asbjornsen is an Associate Professor of Ecosystem Ecology and Restoration in the Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management at Iowa State University. Her research interests are focused on restoring ecological structure and function to degraded ecosystems, particularly related to water cycling and the hydrologic balance on the scale from individual plants to watersheds. She currently has research projects addressing these issues in oak savanna and agricultural ecosystems in the Midwestern U.S. and in montane cloud forests and high-elevation pine-oak forests in southern Mexico.
Diane M. Debinski
I pursue research and teaching in the fields of conservation biology, landscape ecology, and restoration ecology. I have incorporated many of the major issues of conservation biology into my research, including biodiversity preservation, effects of habitat fragmentation and climate change, and approaches to conserving and restoring what is left of the natural world. I have focused my work primarily at the community level, but I have also worked on population and genetic levels. I take a large landscape approach to investigating biodiversity issues and thus have incorporated many of the approaches from the field of landscape ecology, using tools such as remote sensing and GIS. My montane meadow research in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem provides insight into how a relatively pristine community exhibits interannual change relative to climatic variation. My Midwestern prairie research focuses on improving our understanding of the effects of various types of management on plant, bird, and insect communities. Much of my recent work includes a synthesis of long-term ecological data, focusing on how species distributions change with landscape change (either via prairie restoration or climate change). My next steps include testing hypotheses regarding the mechanisms for these community changes. All of these approaches meet at the interface of species and habitat preservation, two of the major topics that form the underpinnings of my work.
Jose Guzman is originally from southwestern Kansas. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Plant Science and Biotechnology/Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at Kansas State University. Currently, he is working on his Master’s degree at Iowa State University looking at soil carbon dynamics in prairie and agroecosystems. His research has focused on soil carbon dynamics and how it affects soil structure, microbial populations, and nutrient and water availability.
Matt Helmers is an assistant professor and extension agricultural engineer in the ISU Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he studied two-dimensional overland flow and sediment trapping in vegetative filters. His research and extension focus at Iowa State is in the areas of water quality and water resources management. In particular, he is studying water quality and hydrologic effects of agricultural best management practices including strategic placement and design of buffer systems and methods to improve water quality in tile drained landscapes. His extension program is focused on education of producers and other stakeholders on the impacts of agricultural practices on water quality and methods to minimize these impacts. He is an Iowa native from Sibley, and his family still farms in the area.
Barbara Kagima
I am a third year MS student in the Natural Resource Ecology and Management department at Iowa State University. I'm interested in grassland ecosystems, especially tallgrass prairie, and reconstruction/restoration ecology. My hobbies include photography and spending time outdoors, especially during the late summer/early fall in Iowa when the TGP flowers are blooming and the tall grasses are starting to take on a reddish hue.
Matt Liebman is a professor in the Department of Agronomy and the Henry A Wallace Cahir for Sustainable Agriculture . He is also a member of the graduate faculties in Biorenewable Resources and Technology, Crop Production and Physiology, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. His research focuses on the development of farming systems that are productive, profitable and environmentally benign. Topics addressed in his research group include biomass production and nutrient cycling by annual and perennial crops used as biofuel feedstocks; weed suppression by cover crops, rodent and insect seed predators, and diverse crop rotations; nitrogen fertilizer replacement values of legume green manures; energetic costs and economic returns associated with simple and diverse rotation systems; and dynamics of native plant communities in filter and buffer strips constructed in and around corn and soybean fields. He teaches graduate courses concerning diversified farming systems and ecologically based pest management strategies. He is a co-author of the book Ecological Management of Agricultural Weeds, published in 2001 by Cambridge University Press.
Matt O'Neal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Entomology at Iowa State University. Matt’s research is focused on developing ecologically and economically sustainable insect pest management programs for soybean. Currently his laboratory is studying the soybean aphid, Aphis glycines Matsumura (Homoptera: Aphididae) a major new invasive pest of soybean (Glycine max L.) in North America. Understanding the biology of this pest at landscape scales is critical for effective management within Iowa, as aphid migration can generate infestations hundreds of miles from source populations.
Jessica Orlofske
My interest in biology, especially arthropods, began as a child and was encouraged by my parents. I earned a B.S. with a double major in Biology and Wildlife Ecology and Management from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point. I am currently a M.S. student at Iowa State University majoring in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with a minor in Entomology. My future plans include pursuing a Ph.D. My primary research interests are insect ecology and conservation biology.
Jason Palmer
I am a native of Northwest Iowa and work with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources as a natural resource biologist in the Watershed Improvement section. I attended Iowa State University where I received my Bachelors Degree in fisheries sciences and Masters Degree in environmental science/water resources.
Keith E. Schilling is a research geologist at the
Iowa Geological Survey. He received a B.A. degree in Geology from Knox College
and an M.S. degree in Water Resources from Iowa State University. Keith joined
the Iowa Geological Survey in 1997 after working as a Senior Hydrogeologist for
a environmental engineering firm where he specialized in contaminated site
investigation and remediation. Keith is currently responsible for Walnut Creek
Watershed Restoration and Water Quality Monitoring Project in Jasper County,
the site of a large-scale conversion of row crop to prairie at the Neal Smith
National Wildlife Refuge. Keith also conducts research on a variety of other
water-related issues in Iowa, including surface and groundwater interactions,
groundwater flow and quality, and watershed processes.
Dr. Lisa Schulte is an assistant professor of landscape ecology at Iowa State University. Her research focuses on the causes and consequences of landscape and land use change. She studies forests of the northern Great Lakes region and Midwestern Driftless Area, and agroecosystems of the U.S. Corn Belt.
Mark Tomer is a Soil Scientist and Hydrologist with the National Soil Tilth Laboratory of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. He has held this position since 2000. Mark’s background includes a BS in Forestry from Montana, an MS in Soil Physics from Montana State, and a PhD in Soil Science and Water Resources from the University of Minnesota. His past experience includes work on salinity control projects in eastern Montana, and wastewater irrigation research in New Zealand. His current research is focused on determining soil and hydrologic responses to land-use practices at watershed and hillslope scales, with a particular interest in the evaluation of agricultural conservation practices.
Kathryn A. Yurkonis
Kathryn received her B.S. in Biological Sciences from Carroll College in Waukesha, WI (2003) and her M.S. in Biological Sciences from Eastern Illinois University (2005) where she studied exotic species invasion in abandoned agricultural fields. This work was published in Ecology Letters, Plant Ecology, and Journal of Ecology.
Kathryn is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Ecology, Evolutionary Biology Graduate Program at Iowa State University and is co-advised by Brian J. Wilsey and Kirk A. Moloney. Her research centers on understanding how plant distributions in space may affect future diversity and invasibility. Along these lines, she has been using observational and experimental studies to elucidate the mechanisms that structure vegetation in establishing grasslands. This project was funded in part by the Iowa Department of Transportation Living Roadway Trust Fund, the Iowa Prairie Network, and the Iowa Native Plant Society.