Bill Hoffmann
Associate Professor
Faculty
Gardner Hall 4217
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/plantbiology/Faculty/whoffmann/whoffmann.html
Area(s) of Expertise
My research focuses primarily on understanding how fire, drought, and other factors control tree success and vegetation structure in savannas and forests of North and South America, with particular attention to the Cerrado region of central Brazil and longleaf pine ecosystems of southeastern U.S. To understand these factors from both functional and evolutionary perspectives, my work involves multiple approaches, including ecophysiology, phylogenetic analyses, controlled experiments, demographic studies, and modeling.
Courses taught:
- PB570 Plant Functional Ecology
- PB595 Special Topics: Plant Water Relations
Publications
- Quantifying the short-term flowering after fire in some plant communities of a cerrado grassland, PLANT ECOLOGY & DIVERSITY (2018)
- Sensitivity of woody carbon stocks to bark investment strategy in Neotropical savannas and forests, Biogeosciences (2018)
- Assessing, water-related plant traits to explain slow-wilting in soybean PI 471938, JOURNAL OF CROP IMPROVEMENT (2017)
- Comment on "The extent of forest in dryland biomes", Science (2017)
- Convergence of bark investment according to fire and climate structures ecosystem vulnerability to future change, Ecology Letters (2017)
- Invasibility of a fire-maintained savanna-wetland gradient by non-native, woody plant species, Forest Ecology and Management (2017)
- Trait shifts associated with the subshrub life-history strategy in a tropical savanna, Oecologia (2017)
- Wood decay and the persistence of resprouting species in pyrophilic ecosystems, Trees: Structure and Function (2017)
- The biodiversity cost of carbon sequestration in tropical savanna, Science Advances (2017)
- Enhancing heat tolerance of the little dogwood Cornus canadensis L.f. with introduction of a superoxide reductase gene from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Pyrococcus furiosus, Frontiers in Plant Science (2016)
Publications
Education
Ph.D., Biology, Harvard (1996)
M.A., Biology, Harvard (1992)
B.S., Animal Ecology, Iowa State University (1990)