Greg Barron-Gafford

Greg Barron-Gafford is an Assistant Professor with a split appointment between the School of Geography & Development and Biosphere 2. He received is B.S. in Environmental Sciences from Texas Christian University before earning his M.S. in Forest Ecology from the University of Georgia and a Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from the University of Arizona. His research is centered on developing our understanding of semiarid ecosystem responses and adaptation to climatic changes, such as increased temperature and reduced precipitation. Due to concomitant changes in our earth’s climate and anthropogenic uses of natural systems, regional-scale vegetative cover has been in a state of flux across many semiarid areas. These transitions in vegetation have significant implications for plot, landscape, and regional carbon, water, and energy balance. Barron-Gafford has used a combination of growth chambers, greenhouses, Biosphere 2 macrocosms, and a series of natural-system eddy covariance towers to quantify carbon and water flux across a mosaic of ecosystem types - both natural and built environments. Such data area leading to estimations of environmental limitations to productivity and enhancing the parametrization of regional models aimed at quantifying the influence that vegetative cover has on ecosystem carbon and water flux under current and project climate regimes.