Allen Lab

322 Birge Hall

608-265-3670

265-3670, 262-1725

Environmental Monitoring Program Masters student
I am interested in using GIS to aid in decision making about
water-related issues. Currently, I am working on modeling stormwater runoff quantity and quality using GIS.

Jason Mills jemills2@students.wisc.edu

I am investigating changes in the cedar glade plant community
using Curtis data for comparison. I am also looking into red cedar behavior in Sauk County over a fifty year period using GIS. I have worked as a teaching assistant every semester since I began graduate school and have taught in Botany 100, 130, 152, 460 and ILS 252.

Heidi Baumgartner hbalde@hotmail.com

I am in my second year of the Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development Master’s Program. The intent of my thesis is to examine how well the nexus of technical expertise, community-driven processes, and long-range land use planning is being achieved in the case of natural resource conservation in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has initiated its Smart Growth law, whereby communities are to develop comprehensive plans for sustainable development that meet a set of nine criteria, one of which is the protection of natural resources. I plan to evaluate several completed comprehensive plans for how well they address natural resource conservation (specifically biodiversity) against a template that I am developing. More importantly, I want to find out why these selected communities have or have not included biodiversity protection measures in their comprehensive plans.

Mandy Little amlittle@wisc.edu

I am interested in the response of freshwater wetland plant community dynamics to beaver disturbance and human activity. My dissertation research investigates the effects of beaver on wetland vegetation community dynamics in Acadia National Park, Maine, USA. I am using a multi-scale approach to describe system dynamics and develop a predictive model in the hopes of helping ANP to better manage beaver and wetland plant communities in the future. The specific components of my research involve vegetation field sampling (including Sphagnum moss), chemical and hydrological sampling, peat core and tree ring analysis, and air photo interpretation. Previous work involved applying a two-phased resource transition model to beaver spatiotemporal dynamics at multiple scales. I am interested in issues concerning scale and the application of systems principles to
ecological management.

I am also a US Geological Survey employee in the Student Career
Employment Program (SCEP) at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center,
Maryland.

Publications and Published Abstracts:

Little, A.M. and G.R. Guntentspergen. 2003. The influence of beaver and anthropogenic activity on the composition of poor fen plant
communities on Mount Desert Island, Maine, USA. Oral presentation.
Society of Wetland Scientists 24th Annual Meeting. New Orleans, LA.

Tainter, J. A., T. F. H. Allen, A. Little, and T. W. Hoekstra. 2003.
Resource transitions and energy gain: contexts of organization.
Conservation Ecology 7(3): 4. [online] URL:
http://www.consecol.org/vol7/iss3/art4

Allen, T.F.H., M. Giampietro, and A.M. Little. The distinctive
character of ecological engineering. Ecological Engineering in press.

Little, A.M. 2002. Resource quality and beaver spatiotemporal
dynamics. M.S. Thesis. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI.

Little, A.M. and T.F.H. Allen. How eager does a beaver have to be?
Understanding complex systems using resource transitions. Bioscience
in prep.

Little, A.M. 2002. How eager does a beaver have to be? Understanding
complex systems using resource transitions. Oral presentation. Madison Ecology Group Graduate Student Ecology Symposium. Madison, WI.

Little, A.M. and T.F.H. Allen. 2001. Thermodynamics and resource
quality in beaver spatiotemporal dynamics. Oral presentation.
Ecological Society of America 86th Annual Meeting. Madison, WI.