Karen Root

Research Interests:

My primary research focus is the conservation of biodiversity, including conservation planning and management. This research combines ecological fieldwork with the application of quantitative techniques such as GIS. and risk assessment to conservation issues. I am especially interested in the distribution and ecological requirements of native species and what makes them vulnerable to extinction. Work in my lab includes projects that focus on a variety of organisms and scales from single species population dynamics to landscape-scale multispecies reserve designs. My graduate students work on projects such as habitat suitability analysis for vertebrates, PVA for listed species, mark-recapture studies, and ecosystem characterization. I teach courses such as: Conservation Biology in Practice, Wildlife Biology, and Fundamentals of Ecology.

Selected Publications:

Martin, A. K. and K. V. Root. 2020. Examining land use changes to evaluate the effects of land management in a complex, dynamic landscape. Environmental Management 66:333-347 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-020-01316-2.

Martin, A. K. and K. V. Root. 2020. Challenges and opportunities for Terrapene carolina carolina under different climate scenarios. Remote Sensing 12(5):836; doi.org/10.3390/rs12050836.

Kappler, R. H., K. S. Knight, R. Bienemann,and K. V. Root. 2020. Recovery potential for a green ash floodplain forest using various emerald ash borer management strategies in a population viability analysis. Forest Ecology and Management 461(1):117925; doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2020.117925.

Kappler, R. H., K. S. Knight, and K. V. Root. 2019. Evaluating the Population Viability of Green Ash Trees (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) Before and After the Emerald Ash Borer Beetle (Agrilus planipennis) Invasion. Ecological Modelling 400:53-59; doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2019.03.017.

Schetter, T. and K. V. Root. 2011. Assessing an imperiled oak savanna landscape in northwestern Ohio using Landsat data. Natural Areas Journal 31(2):118-130.

Buckman-Sewald, J., Whorton, C. and K.V. Root. 2014. Developing macrohabitat models for bats in parks using Maxent and testing them with data collected from citizen scientists. International Journal of Biodiversity and Conservation 6(2): 171-183. [DOI: 10.5897/IJBC2013.0647].

Kappler, R. H., K. S. Knight, J. Koch, and K. V. Root. 2018. Neighboring tree effects and soil nutrient associations with surviving green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) in an emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) infested floodplain forest. Forests 2018, 9(4), 183; doi:10.3390/f9040183.

Hanasono, L. K., E. M. Broido, M. M. Yacobucci, K. V. Root, S. Pena, D. A. O'Neil. 2018. Secret Service: Revealing Gender Biases in the Visibility and Value of Faculty Service. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 12(1), 85–98. doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000081.