William S. Currie

Bill is an Associate Professor at the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) at the University of Michigan. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) and a postdoctoral scholar at the Ecosystem Center, Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He completed his PhD working with John Aber at the University of New Hampshire in 1995 and a MS working with Jim Galloway at the University of Virginia in 1992. He earned a BS in Physics from Brown University.

Follow the navigation links at left for more information about Bill's research interests, teaching, and publications. Download a copy of Bill Currie's Curriculum Vitae.

Email: wcurrie@umich.edu
Office voice: 734-647-2453
Office: 2532 Dana building, UM Central Campus
Bill Currie's SNRE faculty web page

Nic Enstice

Nic is at the writing stage in his MS thesis focusing on assessing both the acceptability, to farmers and other stakeholders, and the effectiveness of "best management practices" (BMPs) to control agricultural nutrient runoff into streams in the Raisin River Watershed (Southeastern Michigan). He is assessing acceptability of BMPs through a stakeholder survey. In summer 2008 he distributed 2,500 surveys to local stakeholder groups and had an 8% response rate. Next, he is assessing the effectiveness of varous BMPs by constructing scenarios to drive a large watershed-scale hydrogeochemical model.

As he writes his thesis, Nic is also working on a publication to submit to the journal Water Resources Research.

Nic's graduate study was supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) and some research costs were covered by UM Rackham funds. Nic is a Doris Duke Fellow, member of a fellowship program that currently supports about 25 SNRE Masters students.

Meghan Hutchins

Meghan is interested in ecosystem simulation and modeling, working toward a MS in the Environmental Informatics field of study together with a Graduate Certificate in Complex Systems through the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at Michigan.

Meghan is developing a MS thesis topic combining modeling and field work as part of the SLUCE project. She is investigating how residential landowners manage their vegetation and how vegetation-human interactions and human-human interactions affect scaling of vegetation and soil patterns and processes from lots to larger landscape patches. This summer she will be conducting a survey of residential landowner behaviors and preferences together with physical sampling and measurements of soils and vegetation in residential lots.

Previously, Meghan worked for 5 years as a Java application developer in Madison, Wisconsin. Meghan has a BS degree in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire.

Katie Pethan

Katie is working towards a Master of Science in Sustainable Systems at SNRE. She is interested in sustainable, localized resource management through ecological design.

She will work with the Office of the Water Resources Commissioner's Rain Garden Program to complete her Master's Opus seminar project on Localization with Dr. Thomas Princen, Dr. James Crowfoot, and Dr. Ray De Young.

Katie is originally from Kohler, Wisconsin; and completed her undergraduate study at the University of Kansas, where she studied French, German, and Political Science.

In the past Katie has worked at the Huron River Watershed Council on the Millers Creek storm water and rain garden initiatives; with the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and Pinnacles National Monument as an environmental educator; and with the law firm, Weitz & Luxenberg, PC as a researcher for MTBE groundwater contamination class action lawsuits. She also spent summer 2008 in Madagascar, working on a USAID Eco-Regional Initiatives project concerning invasive species management and the question of invasiveness of Jatropha curcas in the New Protected Areas (NAPs) of the Ranomafana-Andringitra Corridor.

Katie's travel and research in Madagascar was partially supported through the Weinberg Foundation, the Center for the Education of Women, and Rackham Travel and Conference grants. She has also received support from AmeriCorps and has been supported as a teaching assistant and Graduate Student Research Assistant at UM.

Pete Gamberg

Pete has interests in environmental modeling that started while focusing on snow science at Montana State University, where he obtained his undergraduate degree. For his Masters work at SNRE, he is interested in pursuing dynamic modeling of land use and land cover change. He is working towards a MS in Environmental Informatics. Pete is helping to conduct GIS work for site planning and tracing the history of residential lots back through time to the 1950s using aerial photography as part of the SLUCE project research.

Past lab members

(Note to past lab members -- send an update about what you are doing now and we'll add it here, including a link to your own web page or CV if you like.)

Alicia Lindauer-Thompson

Alicia completed a MS thesis in 2008 that used a combination of forest dynamics modeling, GIS, and field research to address how a goal of storing atmospheric carbon could alter decision-making processes for forest management in Michigan and the Great Lakes region. In April 2008, Alicia presented her research at the Association of American Geographers annual meeting in Boston, MA.

Alicia's graduate work was supported through a SNRE fellowship, through teaching assistantships, and through research grants to Dr. Currie from the US Forest Service.

Alicia was selected as a Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) finalist and attended the PMF Job Fair in Washington, DC. She was recently hired by the US Department of Energy in Washington, DC where she will work on renewable energy infrastructure in the Biomass Office of the Department of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

Ari Kahan

Ari completed his MS in 2008 in Environmental Informatics (EI) and Conservation Biology (CB). His MS thesis combined field work with GIS analysis of aerial photographs and US census data. He used this combination of tools to test the hypothesis that, in urban to rural gradients, the soil and plant nitrogen and plant biodiversity in protected areas (conservation areas) is affected by the housing density in the surrounding landscape.

Ari has submitted a publication of his thesis results to the journal Landscape Ecology. We're keeping our fingers crossed and hope to see it in print soon ...

Ari's graduate work was partially supported by an SNRE Fellowship, teaching assistantships, UM Rackham funds, and a research seed grant to Dr. Currie from SNRE.

Ari now works at the US Environmental Protection Agency, hired as part of the Federal Career Intern Program.

Wim Wessel

Dr. Wim Wessel visited from the Netherlands to work as a postdoctoral scholar in the Currie lab in 2003 - 2004. Wim worked on making improvements to the TRACE model of ecosystem biogeochemistry in two main areas: (1) improving the algorithms for calculation of nitrogen isotope redistributions, particularly for natural-abundance calculations, and (2) improving the simulated relationship between light extinction and photosynthesis in coniferous forest canopies. This latter improvement allowed us to apply the TRACE model at the Duke University FACE site, to simulate N isotope redistributions in forest stands being artificially exposed to elevated CO2.

Wim's research in the Currie lab was supported by a research grant to Dr. Currie from the National Science Foundation.

Shanna Shaked

Shanna is a PhD candidate in Applied Physics at the University of Michigan. Early in her PhD program, she collaborated with Bill Currie to do research on the thermodynamics of forest canopies. The work produced a calculation of entropy production by a forest canopy, focussing on the thermodynamic relationships among temperature, evapotranspiration, and shortwave and longwave radiation, using field data collected on an eddy-flux tower at the Harvard Forest, Mass. A paper reporting this research is now in review in the journal Ecological Complexity.

Shanna's research with Bill Currie was supported through a Rackham graduate fellowship at UM. She is now supported through a GESI PhD Fellowship (Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute) at Michigan.

Tao Zhang

Tao was a Graduate Research Assistant in the Currie lab at SNRE in 2003-2005. Tao did GIS work to produce regional-scale data layers at 1 km resolution so that the TRACE model of ecosystem biogeochemistry could be applied to study carbon-nitrogen interactions in forests across the Great Lakes and northeastern US. Toa also worked with US Forest Service FIA (Forest Inventory and Analysis) data at the county scale to help in parameterizing forest ages for regional application of the TRACE model.

Tao's work in the Currie lab was supported through research grants to Dr. Currie from the National Science Foundation and the US Forest Service. Tao is now working toward a MS in Landscape Architecture at SNRE.

Madhura Kulkarni

Madhura completed a MS degree from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES), working with and advised by Bill Currie while he was a professor at the University of Maryland. Her work focussed on assessing multi-factor controls on denitrification in wetland patches in a reclaimed mineland in western Maryland.

While in the Currie lab, Madhura was coauthor on a paper on microtopography and ecosystem processes published in Recent Research Developments in Ecology.

Madhura's work in the Currie lab was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. After completing her MS with Dr. Currie, Madhura entered the PhD program at Cornell University.

Molly Ramsey

Molly completed a MS degree from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES), working with and advised by Bill Currie while he was a professor at the University of Maryland. Her work focussed on assessing the effects of soil moisture and microtopography on N availability and plant productivity in wetland patches in a reclaimed mineland in western Maryland.

While in the Currie lab, Molly was lead author on a paper on microtopography and ecosystem processes published in Recent Research Developments in Ecology and coauthor on a paper on watershed C and N cycling published in Biogeochemistry.

Molly's graduate work in the Currie lab was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. After completing her MS with Dr. Currie, she entered the PhD program at Syracuse University.

Sharon Gourdji

Sharon completed a dual-degree MS in Natural Resources & Environment (NRE) and Economics at the University of Michigan, working with and advised by Dr. Currie in SNRE. She worked on a MS Project focussed on the potential re-direction of flows in a river system in India.

Sharon's graduate work with Dr. Currie was partially supported through a research grant to Dr. Currie from the National Science Foundation. After completing her MS, Sharon entered the PhD program in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Sciences (AOSS) in the Engineering School at the University of Michigan.

Cyndee Giffen

Cyndee was a Graduate Research Assistant and graduate student working with Dr. Currie, who co-advised her together with Dr. Keith Eshleman, at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES). Cyndee's graduate work focussed on studying stream chemistry in a paired watershed study to compare a reclaimed mineland with a natural forest in western Maryland.

Cyndee's work with Dr. Currie was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Cyndee now works as a laboratory technician and research assistant at the University of Wisconsin.

Dave Helmers

Dave was a full-time Research Technician working with Dr. Currie while he was at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES), at the Appalachian Laboratory. Dave's work focussed on developing GIS data layers for regional, spatial application of the TRACE model of ecosystem biogeochemistry.

Dave's work was supported through a research grant to Dr. Currie from the National Science Foundation.

Geoff Frech

Geoff was a full-time Research Technician working with Dr. Currie while he was at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES), at the Appalachian Laboratory. Geoff was the laboratory manager for Dr. Currie's soil and plant laboratory at Maryland, and Geoff also took part in field work in forested watersheds.

Geoff was supported through research grants to Dr. Currie from the National Science Foundation and the US Forest Service, and was also supported by a grant to UMCES from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Graduate Student Instructors, Temporary assistants, Undergraduate assistants, and interns

(This list is by no means complete -- if you worked for Bill Currie, send a photo and we'll add it here.)

Claire Otwell

Claire, an undergraduate student at Michigan, was a field research assistant in the Currie lab group at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS) in summer 2007. She worked as an assistant to graduate student Alicia Lindauer-Thompson. Claire helped to complete stem maps, detailed maps of the precise locations, sizes, and species of forest trees in both the DIRT and FASET field studies at UMBS. These data were used in Alicia Lindauer-Thompson's thesis research on modeling forest decision making and will also be used by Dr. Currie in the development and testing of spatial models of forest ecosystem nutrient cycling, C storage, and tree species competition.

This work was supported through a research grant to Dr. Currie from the US Forest Service.

Elizabeth Haber

Elizabeth, an undergraduate student at Michigan, was a field research assistant in the Currie lab group at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS) in summer 2008. She worked as an assistant to graduate student Elissa Chasen. Elizabeth helped to complete stem maps, detailed maps of the precise locations, sizes, and species of forest trees in the DIRT field study at UMBS. These data will be used by Dr. Currie in the development and testing of spatial models of forest ecosystem nutrient cycling, C storage, and tree species competition.

This work was supported through a research grant to Dr. Currie from the US Forest Service.

Elissa Chasen

Elissa is a MS student in SNRE being advised by Prof. Mark Hunter. In summer 2008 she worked as a field assistant for Bill Currie to complete stem maps, detailed maps of the precise locations, sizes, and species of forest trees in the DIRT field study at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS). These data will be used in the development and testing of spatial models of forest ecosystem nutrient cycling, C storage, and tree species competition.

This work was supported through a research grant to Dr. Currie from the US Forest Service.

Dan Fishman

Dan completed a MS degree in Natural Resources and Environment from SNRE in 2008, advised by Prof. Sara Adlerstein. Dan worked as a graduate student instructor (GSI) for Bill Currie in his outreach course for the Michigan Math and Science Scholars in summer 2007 and summer 2008.

Leslie Briggs

Leslie was an undergraduate minor in the Program in the Environment (PitE) at the University of Michigan. She worked as an undergraduate student instructor for Dr. Currie's outreach course in the Michigan Math and Science Scholars in summer 2008.

Dan Milz

Dan worked for Dr. Currie as a Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) for the course NRE 401, "Modeling Coupled Human-Natural Systems." Dan completed a MS degree in Urban Planning in 2008.

Dan now works for an environmental consulting firm in Wisconsin.

Amrita Patil

Amrita was an undergraduate major in the Program in the Environment (PitE) at the University of Michigan. She worked as an undergraduate student instructor for Dr. Currie's outreach course in the Michigan Math and Science Scholars in summer 2007.

Thida Sam

Thida was an undergraduate major in the Program in the Environment (PitE) at the University of Michigan. She worked as an undergraduate student instructor for Dr. Currie's outreach course in the Michigan Math and Science Scholars in summer 2006. Thida later entered the Masters Program in Urban Planning at the University of Michigan.

Prakash Vempati

Prakash worked as an undergraduate intern in the Currie lab in summer 2004. He explored the use of a prototype computer model, developed by Dr. Currie, of decomposition in the forest floor that linked the growth of soil flora (bacteria and fungi) with decomposition processes, C fluxes and N cycling, and with grazing and floral biomass regulation by the soil fauna food web. Prakash was an undergraduate student at Johns Hopkins University.

Troy Cline

Troy worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the Currie lab at the University of Maryland in summer 2001. He worked on a pilot study to use an isothermal microcalorimeter to measure energy use by soil flora (bacteria and fungi) and the relationship of this energy use to C fluxes and N cycling in soil.

Troy was supported through a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) grant to Dr. Currie from the National Science Foundation. He completed a BS in Microbiology from Brigham Young University and later entered the PhD program at Ohio State University.