Ecological Big Questions: What I Study Part 1

I've been asked by some friends to explain what I do, science-wise.  I'm stunned and having a hard time of it.

This is a novel query-- most folks have no interest and those that are interested usually already work in the field.  So I am writing it out here so that I can figure out the best way to say it, and direct people here should there every be similar queries again. 

My actual job is almost entirely teaching.  Research and scholarly activities are expected, but there is little time for them during the school year and institutionally little reward for doing more (and also few negative consequences for doing less, a real perk as a parent and a teacher who would, in fact, perish in a "publish or perish" system).  I also have a bunch of "scholarship adjacent" roles-- herbarium curator, greenhouse manager, invasive species monitor, and teaching materials editor-- for which I have never figured out fully how to receive "credit" (nor, in fact, figured out who is doing the crediting).

Summer 2019

As a researcher, I align with one of the most basic ecological questions, "Why are organisms where they are?"  Ecology has a geographic component (it's the interactions of organisms and their environment, after all), but as I type I realize that the temporal component is as important: "Why are organisms where and WHEN they are, and how do those change?"

I'm also fascinated by the core question of conservation biology, "How can humans simultaneously use and converse natural resources?"

These questions, of course, are addressed by all ecologists and conservation biologists, and I am not going to answer them anytime soon, but they are behind what I do.  At this point I choose to look at terrestrial plant populations, but I have done community level work in the past, and am very interested in ecosystem-level and individual-level processes.