My research uses principles from the geosciences, biology, and chemistry to understand the terrestrial carbon cycle. Areas of focus include ecosystem response to climate, urbanization effects on carbon fluxes and pools, and how forest management affects atmospheric carbon sequestration. Much of my research is locally-based and designed to facilitate undergraduate participation.
Below is the live image from Prof. Dunn’s office, updated once an hour. These continual measurements are being made as part of the global Phenocam network, which incorporates images across the world to detect the timing of seasonal change. For more information about Phenocam, go to https://phenocam.nau.edu/webcam/. If you are on the campus network, you can see a real-time video by clicking here.
This project measures the long-term carbon exchange in three forest stands: a red pine plantation, a recently clearcut red pine plantation, and 20-year-old stand naturally regenerating from a red pine plantation.
This research is designed to study the coupled human-natural system across the urban-to-rural gradient from the Harvard Forest in Petersham, MA, to Boston, MA. Two papers from this research can be found under the “Publications” section (Briber et al. 2013, 2015).
I remain involved with research stemming from my doctoral research at the Northern Old Black Spruce study site in northern Manitoba, Canada. This site had the longest continuous record of high-frequency carbon exchange in the boreal forest. As I had primary responsibility for running the site from 1998-2007, I continue to be active in collaborative work utilizing its data, which are freely available at http://atmos.seas.harvard.edu/lab/data/boreasdata.html under a Fair Use policy
I am an active contributor to the geoscience education community, most recently co-authoring a two-week module called “Earth’s Thermostat” as part of the NSF-funded InTeGrate project (see link).
