CHRISTOPHER NEILL

Senior Scientist

Tel: 508-289-7481 | Fax: 508-457-1548
E-mail: cneill@mbl.edu

Ph.D. University of Massachusetts Amherst 1992
M.S. University of Massachusetts Amherst 1988
B.S. Cornell University 1980

Links: Full CV

Research Statement:
I try to understand how changes in land use and other human activities alter the structure of ecosystems. Several of my research projects investigate the ecological consequences of deforestation of the world’s largest tropical rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon. I study how deforestation changes the way water and dissolved and particulate materials move from land to water and within channels of streams and rivers. I also examine how forest clearing alters the rates of cycling of soil nutrients and organic matter and the emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides from soils to the atmosphere. My research group uses comparisons of gauged catchments, natural abundance of stable isotopes and field stable isotope additions, and paired hydrological and hydrochemical measurements.

I also direct the Brown-MBL Partnership and the Brown-MBL Graduate Program in Biology and Environmental Science.

In August 2010, colleagues from Brown and Columbia Universities and I were awarded a Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) grant. The project will examine the consequences for human well-being, land use and ecosystems services of the intensification of agriculture associated with Millennium Villages of Africa. We actively seek new graduate students for this new project. (PIRE project description)

I also work on the ecology and restoration of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in coastal Massachusetts, where rapid increases in residential development threaten ecosystems that contain high and unique biological diversity. With colleagues at The Nature Conservancy and elsewhere, I conduct large-scale management experiments that examine the effects of treatments, such as clearing or burning on these disturbance-dependent coastal sandplain grasslands and shrublands. In 2007 we initiated a new experiment to test methods for restoring old farmland to sandplain grassland on Martha’s Vineyard. I also study the ecology of coastal plain ponds, which harbor particularly high plant diversity along their shorelines.


Recent Publications:

2010. Cleveland, C. C., B. Z. Houlton, C. Neill, S. C. Reed, A. R. Townsend and Y. Wang. Using indirect methods to constrain symbiotic nitrogen fixation rates: A case study from an Amazonian rain forest. Biogeochemistry 99:1–13.

2010. Germer, S, C. Neill, A. V. Krusche and H. Elsenbeer. Influence of land-use change on near-surface hydrological processes: Undisturbed forest to pasture. Journal of Hydrology 380:473-480.

2009. Neill, C., M. O. Bezerra, R. McHorney and C. B. O’Dea. Distribution, species composition and management implications of seed banks in southern New England coastal plain ponds. Biological Conservation 142:1350-1361.

2009. Chaves, J., C. Neill, S. Germer, S. Gouveia Neto, A. V. Krusche, A. Castellanos Bonilla and H. Elsenbeer. Nitrogen transformations in flowpaths leading from soils to streams in Amazon forest and pasture. Ecosystems 12: 961-972.

FULL PUBLICATIONS LIST >>>