My research considers the impacts of urbanization on wildlife habitats and communities. Included in this research are projects ranging in location and degree of development from city parks in New York City and Chicago to the urban fringe of Kansas City.
Urbanization is a dynamic process that results in changes at the landscape level.
My graduate students and I are studying how different types of urban development impact urban open spaces and the wildlife communities associated with them. This research has included a study of small mammal communities in isolated and connected habitat patches, a study of the relationship between small mammal species composition and abundance and forest stand structure, and a study of the impacts of adjacent land use on amphibian species found in riparian habitats. My students and I are studying how access to and perception of open spaces are influenced by race and affluence . We are also studying the factors that lead to landowner participation in a variety of cost share programs designed to protect water quality in the Brush Creek Watershed near the not so urban town of Humansville, Missouri. I spent the summers of 1995 and 1996 as a visiting scientist at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York.