Kimberley Simpson

I am an ecologist interested in the causes and consequences of plant trait diversity, particularly those relating to fire. Plant traits are the axis around which fire-prone ecosystems turn, by governing both the fire regime and vegetation responses to it, in a tight co-evolutionary process with Earth-system-scale consequences. However, this feedback is increasingly transformed by substantial human-driven changes to fire regimes and plant communities worldwide. My goal is to develop a global understanding of plant-fire relationships in the Anthropocene, in order to evaluate the impacts of environmental change and design effective mitigation measures.