Scott L. Collins

I received my PhD from the University of Oklahoma in 1981. After a postdoc with Dr. Ralph Good at Rutgers University I returned to the University of Oklahoma as an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Botany. In 1992 I moved to the National Science Foundation where I served as a Program Director in various programs including Ecology, LTER, Conservation and Restoration Biology, TECO, and Integrated Research Challenges. I was the original NSF Program Director for NEON helping to organize six NEON planning workshops from 2000 through 2002. In 2003 I moved to the University of New Mexico where I am now a Professor of Biology and the PI on the Sevilleta Long-term Ecological Research Program (LTER). The overarching goal of the Sevilleta LTER, established in 1988, is to understand how abiotic drivers and constraints affect dynamics and stability in aridland populations, communities, and ecosystems. Using both long term measurements and experimental manipulations, we are particularly interested in determining how disturbances, such as fire, will interact with global environmental change to affect moisture inputs and losses, and soil nutrient dynamics, and how those drivers will affect plant community composition and structure. I have also worked extensively in tallgrass prairie as part of the Konza Prairie Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) Program since 1988 where I am now involved in a multi-institution (UNM, Yale, Colorado State and Kansas State) Ecosystem Convergence research project comparing fire, climate and herbivore effects on tallgrass prairie in North America and mesic Savanna grassland in Kruger National Park, South Africa (see current projects). I have served as Chair of the Vegetation and Long-term Studies sections of ESA, and Chair of the ESA Publications Committee. I served on the Editorial Boards of Community Ecology, Journal of Vegetation Science and Journal of Ecology. I am currently on the Editorial Boards of BioScience and Oecologia. After coming to UNM in 2003, I helped to establish a SEEDS Chapter in the Biology Department in association with the Sevilleta LTER. I am also the lead PI on the Sevilleta LTER Summer REU Program (see opportunities page).