Plants

Alexandra Konings leads the Remote Sensing Ecohydrology group, which studies interactions between the global carbon and water cycles. That is, her research studies how changes in hydrological conditions change ecosystems, and how this in turn feeds back to weather and climate. These interactions include studies of transpiration and root water uptake, photosynthesis, mortality, and fire processes, among others.

I completed a master’s degree at the Yale School of Forestry and Environment Science (F&ES) in 2003 and obtained my PhD in 2008 from UC Berkeley’s Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy and Management (ESPM) in Matteo Garbelotto's lab. I did my postdoctoral training at UC Berkeley in the Dept. of Plant & Microbial Biology with Tom Bruns, and at Stanford in the Dept. of Biology with Tadashi Fukami. I was an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Plant Pathology at the University of Minnesota from 2011-2012 before coming to Stanford in 2012 to join the Dept.

My scientific work examines the study of species interactions in tropical ecosystems from California, Latin America, and other tropical areas of the world. Recent research highlights the decline of animal life (“defaunation”), and how this affects ecosystem processes/services (e.g. disease regulation). I teach ecology, natural history, conservation biology, and biocultural diversity at undergraduate and graduate levels at Stanford, and conduct science education programs with underserved children in the Bay Area and our study sites.