James S. Clark, Nicholas Distinguished Professor of Environmental Science  

James S. Clark

Clark’s lab uses using long-term experiments and monitoring studies to understand disturbance and climate controls on ecosystem dynamics. Clark is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, which also recognized him with the William Skinner Cooper Award, for his research on barrier beach dynamics, and the George Mercer Award, for studies of climate change and fire. He is an ESA Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow. For excellence in teaching and research, he was one of 15 scientists recognized with the National Science Foundation’s five-yr Presidential Faculty Fellow Award.  He is a recipient of the Humboldt Research Prize and a Lauréat of Emmanuel Macron’s Make Our Planet Great Again. Clark is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Among recent activities he led the National Assessment on Effects of Drought on Forests and Rangelands in the United States: A Comprehensive Science Synthesis, an effort involving 70 academic and government scientists that received the Chief of the Forest Service Science Award for 2016. Clark has authored  more than 250 refereed scientific articles and published four books. Full publication list.

Clark has testified before congress on behalf of the Ecological Society of America and the NSF budget. He served on editorial boards for Ecology and Ecological Monographs, Annual Reviews of Ecology and Systematics, Global Change Biology, Ecosystems, Elementa, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, and the Journal for Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics.  He has served on NSF Advisory panels for Ecology, Earth System History, LTER, Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease, and Ecosystem Science. He chaired ESA’s Mercer Award Committee and was Vice President for Science. He was a founding member of the Science Advisory Board of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

Education:
Ph.D., University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 1988
PhD, University of Minnesota
MS, University of Massachusetts
BS, North Carolina State University

Office Location: A201 LSRC, Durham, NC 27708
Email Address: jimclark@duke.edu
Web Page: http://sites.nicholas.duke.edu/clarklab/
Additional Web Page: https://sites.nicholas.duke.edu/clarklab/

Specialties:
Ecology and Population Biology

Research Categories: Ecology

Research Description: James S. Clark is H.L. Blomquist Professor of the Nicholas School of the Environment, Professor of Biology, and Professor of Statistics and Decision Science. Clark’s research focuses on how global change affects forests. Current projects explore consequences of climate, CO2, and disturbance. His lab is using long-term experiments and monitoring studies to determine disturbance and climate controls on the dynamics of 20th century forests in combination with extensive modeling to forecast ecosystem change. Clark has authored over 120 refereed scientific articles and published four books, including Models for Ecological Data (Princeton, 2007), Models for Ecological Data in R (Princeton, 2007), Hierarchical Models of the Environment (Oxford, 2006), and Sediment Records of Biomass Burning and Global Change (Springer, 1997). Clark received a B.S. from the North Carolina State University in Entomology (1979), a M.S. from the University of Massachusetts in Forestry and Wildlife (1984), and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in Ecology (1988). Between his M.S. and Ph.D., he studied one year at the University of Göttingen under a Fulbright-DAAD fellowship. At Duke University, Clark teaches Biodiversity Science and Applications and Ecological Models & Data. He has served as Director for the Center on Global Change, and Director of Graduate Studies for the University Program in Ecology. Clark is recipient of ESA's William Skinner Cooper Award (1988), for his research on barrier beach dynamics, and George Mercer Award (1991), for studies of climate change and fire. For excellence in teaching and research, he was one of 15 scientists recognized by President Clinton with the National Science Foundation’s five-yr Presidential Faculty Fellow Award (1994). In 1998 he was named an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, on behalf of the Ecological Society of America. He is the 2004 Distinguished Alumnus from Natural Resources Conservation, University of Massachusetts. In 2005, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Clark has testified before congress on behalf of the Ecological Society of America and the NSF budget. He served on editorial boards for Ecology and Ecological Monographs (1996 -1999), Annual Reviews of Ecology and Systematics (1998 - 2003), Global Change Biology (1994 - ), Ecosystems (2003 - ), and Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2006-) and on NSF Advisory panels for Ecology (1992 - 1997), Earth System History (1994), and LTER (2000). He chaired ESA's Mercer Award Committee and was Vice President for Science (1999 - 2004). He served on the Science Advisory Board of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

Recent Publications   (More Publications)   (search)

  1. Journé, V; Bogdziewicz, M; Courbaud, B; Kunstler, G; Qiu, T; Acuña, M-CA; Ascoli, D; Bergeron, Y; Berveiller, D; Boivin, T; Bonal, R; Caignard, T; Cailleret, M; Calama, R; Camarero, JJ; Chang-Yang, C-H; Chave, J; Chianucci, F; Curt, T; Cutini, A; Das, A; Daskalakou, E; Davi, H; Delpierre, N; Delzon, S; Dietze, M; Calderon, SD; Dormont, L; Espelta, JM; Farfan-Rios, W; Fenner, M; Franklin, J; Gehring, C; Gilbert, G; Gratzer, G; Greenberg, CH; Guignabert, A; Guo, Q; Hacket-Pain, A; Hampe, A; Han, Q; Hanley, ME; Lambers, JHR; Holík, J; Hoshizaki, K; Ibanez, I; Johnstone, JF; Knops, JMH; Kobe, RK; Kurokawa, H; Lageard, J; LaMontagne, J; Ledwon, M; Lefèvre, F; Leininger, T; Limousin, J-M; Lutz, J; Macias, D; Mårell, A; McIntire, E; Moran, EV; Motta, R; Myers, J; Nagel, TA; Naoe, S; Noguchi, M; Norghauer, J; Oguro, M; Ourcival, J-M; Parmenter, R; Pearse, I; Pérez-Ramos, IM; Piechnik, Ł; Podgórski, T; Poulsen, J; Redmond, MD; Reid, CD; Samonil, P; Scher, CL; Schlesinger, WH; Seget, B; Sharma, S; Shibata, M; Silman, M; Steele, M; Stephenson, N; Straub, J; Sutton, S; Swenson, JJ; Swift, M; Thomas, PA; Uriarte, M; Vacchiano, G; Whipple, A; Whitham, T; Wright, SJ; Zhu, K; Zimmerman, J; Żywiec, M; Clark, JS, The Relationship Between Maturation Size and Maximum Tree Size From Tropical to Boreal Climates., Ecology letters, vol. 27 no. 9 (September, 2024), pp. e14500 [doi]  [abs].
  2. Qiu, T; Clark, JS; Kovach, KR; Townsend, PA; Swenson, JJ, Remotely sensed crown nutrient concentrations modulate forest reproduction across the contiguous United States., Ecology, vol. 105 no. 8 (August, 2024), pp. e4366 [doi]  [abs].
  3. Scher, CL; Roberts, SM; Krause, KP; Clark, JS, Leveraging relationships between species abundances to improve predictions and inform conservation, Journal of Applied Ecology, vol. 61 no. 7 (July, 2024), pp. 1662-1672 [doi]  [abs].
  4. Núñez, CL; Clark, JS; Poulsen, JR, Disturbance sensitivity shapes patterns of tree species distribution in Afrotropical lowland rainforests more than climate or soil., Ecology and evolution, vol. 14 no. 5 (May, 2024), pp. e11329 [doi]  [abs].
  5. Girard-Tercieux, C; Vieilledent, G; Clark, A; Clark, JS; Courbaud, B; Fortunel, C; Kunstler, G; Pélissier, R; Rüger, N; Maréchaux, I, Beyond variance: simple random distributions are not a good proxy for intraspecific variability in systems with environmental structure, Peer Community Journal, vol. 4 (January, 2024) [doi]  [abs].