My research investigates the resilience of wetland ecosystems to both climate change and disturbance regimes, as well as the roles these ecosystems can play as natural climate solutions.
I like to use a multi-scale approach, combining both field research and laboratory analysis with remote sensing and modelling approaches to better constrain spatio-temporal dynamics of wetland ecosystems.
With my work, I aim to contribute to a better understanding of the complex feedbacks between ecosystem resilience and disturbance regimes under a rapidly changing climate.
Research themes:

Swamp/wet woodland carbon dynamics and ecosystem functioning
I am interested in improving our understanding of swamps/wet woodland ecosystem functioning globally. These are incredibly important yet under-appreciated wetland ecosystems. I am also a co-founder of the Wet Woodlands Research Network.




(B) needle-leaved, (C) mixedwood and (D) shrub/thicket swamps from the published literature across Canada and the USA. See Davidson et al. 2022 Environmental Research Letters for more details

Wildfire impacts on peatland carbon cycling
I am interested in the vulnerability and resilience of peatland ecosystems to the impacts of wildfire. This includes vegetation dynamics following wildfire and post-fire biogeochemical cycling and carbon fluxes.







Anthropogenic disturbance impacts on peatland functioning
Similarly, I am interested in how peatland ecosystems function following disturbance following human activities, including drainage, resource extraction and forestry practices. This includes looking at soil characteristics, vegetation community dynamics and carbon fluxes.


Upscaling ecosystem functioning from plot scale to landscape scale
I am really interested in how we can use our understanding of ecosystem functions at the plot scale and scale them up to the landscape scale. This work includes looking at mapping vegetation communities at large scales, upscaling greenhouse gas emissions and improving our understanding of wetland vegetation phenological characteristics to improve earth system and climate models.

