Bill Hoffmann
Associate Professor
University Faculty Scholar
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
- Flammability thresholds or flammability gradients? Determinants of fire across savanna-forest transitions, NEW PHYTOLOGIST (2020)
- No Net Loss of Species Diversity After Prescribed Fires in the Brazilian Savanna, FRONTIERS IN FORESTS AND GLOBAL CHANGE (2020)
- The diversity of post-fire regeneration strategies in the cerrado ground layer, JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY (2020)
- Allocation to leaf area and sapwood area affects water relations of co-occurring savanna and forest trees (vol 163, pg 291, 2010), OECOLOGIA (2019)
- Better lucky than good: How savanna trees escape the fire trap in a variable world, ECOLOGY (2019)
- Comment on "The global tree restoration potential", SCIENCE (2019)
- Rare frost events reinforce tropical savanna-forest boundaries, JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY (2019)
- 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)
Publications
Education
Ph.D., Biology, Harvard (1996)
M.A., Biology, Harvard (1992)
B.S., Animal Ecology, Iowa State University (1990)