Research in the Gotsch lab is focused on understanding how plant communities are affected by changes in climate and the ecosystem services that plant communities provide. We conduct most of our research in the Tropical Montane Cloud Forest in Costa Rica but have recently begun to also conduct research in the urban landscape in Lancaster, PA. Our tropical research efforts are focused on understanding how decreases in water availability will affect a vulnerable community of plants that reside high in tree canopies (i.e. epiphytes). Locally, we are exploring the ability of different street trees to provide ecosystem benefits including water and particulate interception.
This website contains descriptions (and accompanying photo galleries) of our current research and Dr Gotsch's teaching efforts. If you would like additional information, Dr Gotsch's email is on the people page. Thanks for visiting!
LAB NEWS
June 2020: The Gotsch Lab receives a second NSF grant! Project Title: Collaborative Research: RUI: Hydrology of the vegetation on vegetation: Comparison and scaling of rainfall interception and solute alteration by common arboreal epiphytes. NSF-EAR (Hydrology), Award Numbers 1954538, 1954907, 1954322. This project is in collaboration with John Van Stan (Georgia Southern University and Clifton Buck (University of Georgia)
June 2020: Gotsch gives a research webinar entitled Cambio climático en montañas tropicales in a canopy biology series (Descubriendo el Dosel) hosted by Fundacion Alianza Natural Colombia. The talk was given in Spanish but translated closed captions are available on Youtube.
June 2020: Gotsch lab research is featured in a French Documentary about climate change and research in Central America.
June 2020: Lab Post-doc Cameron Williams had a paper accepted in Functional Ecology. This paper is based on results of a greenhouse drought experiment on cloud forest epiphytes in Costa Rica. PDF coming soon!
December 2019: The Gotsch lab gave one invited talk, one contributed talk and one poster at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. See abstractshere.
October 2019: The Gotsch Lab conducted a pilot study on the form and function of epiphytes in the Redwood canopies of Jedediah State Park in California.
November 2018: Gotsch receives an NSF supplemental award to expand upon the lab's work evaluating drought resistance in cloud forest canopy plants.
May 2018: Gotsch is back in action following back surgery. She and students Laura Green and Renee Bicaba join the project post-doc Cameron Williams and our local crew in Costa Rica for summer field work.
December 2017: Winter field season in Monteverde! Gotsch got some heavy climbing in before undergoing back surgery in January of 2018. A few photos here.
August 2017: Our research team (Sybil Gotsch, Cam Williams, Rikke Naesborg, Nalini Nadkarni and Autumn Amici (U Utah) will all be giving talks at the Ecological Society of America Conference in Portland Oregon.
June 5, 2017: Gotsch presented data from the stormwater research project at the Water and Society Conference in Sevilla, Spain
May 1, 2017: Our 2017 field season is underway, check out our photos
March 26, 2017: F&M Tree Climbing Training has begun, check out our photos