Rebecca Montgomery

Background & Expertise

Rebecca Montgomery, PhD, has the honor and privilege to work with many types of collaborators, including students, staff, faculty, artists and land stewards over her more than 20 years at the University of Minnesota. In addition to her professorship, Montgomery is also the F.B. Hubachek Endowed Chair of Forestry. Through field-based studies in tropical, temperate, and boreal forests, she works to better understand plant response to environmental changes like fire and wind disturbances, warming temperatures, altered patterns of rainfall and rising levels of CO2. She recognize that people and land have been tied together since time immemorial and, therefore, the patterns and processes we study reflect and embody this interplay. Research in her lab spans from basic to applied, with the latter focused on meeting needs of land stewards in the Lake States, especially in Minnesota and for the Native Nations sharing that geography. She has several long-term collaborations with artists and community organizers. She teaches field based courses centering plants and ecology.