Background, Research Interests, and Current Projects:
Jian received his B.S. degree in geography in 1997 and M.S. degree in ecology in 2000. In 2005, he received his Ph.D. in forestry from the University of Missouri. His Ph.D. work focused on forest landscape fire and succession modeling. He was the developer of the LANDIS fire module, which has been applied in many ecosystems across the US (e.g., Carlifornia, Missouri, and Wisconsin). Jian's Ph.D. research involved landscape ecology, ecological modelling, spatial statistics, GIS, and wildland fire science. The central theme was to examine the interaction of humans, vegetation, fire, and topography over long time periods and large spatial extents.
Currently, Jian is beginning to research riparian ecosystem dynamics in relation to land use, invasive species, and groundwater in the Walker River Basin. He is also working on the effects of historical fire regimes of desert springs ecosystems in the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. |
