Diana Jerome
MS student
Advisor: Amy Iler, PhD
Research: The effects of climate change on plant phenology: teasing apart the effects of early snowmelt and warmer temperatures
Research interests: Climate Change, Phenology, Community Ecology, Conservation
Projects: Diana is a Masters student studying phenological shifts in response to climate change. She is interested in detangling the drivers of phenology (i.e. the timing of leaf-out, flowering, and fruiting) in subalpine meadows by looking at the interaction between temperature and snowmelt. Experimental warming has been shown to under predict changes in phenology in response to warning, likely due to the exclusion the effect of moisture on phenology. To combat this, Diana’s research manipulates both temperature and moisture (through changes in snowmelt), in order to isolate how environmental changes influence phenology. She will also use this experiment to look at changes in flower, fruit, and seed abundance in response to altered snowmelt and temperatures. In her previous work, Diana was an assessor for IUCN The Red List of Threatened Species focusing on oak (Quercus) species around the world, as well as, other trees of the US.
Grants and Awards
| The Alumnae of Northwestern University Grant, $1,000 | 2019 |
| Plant Biology and Conservation Research Award, $750 | 2019 |
| RMBL Graduate Fellowship Hunter Endowment, $420 | 2019 |
Publications
Barstow, M., Oldfield, S., Westwood, M., Jerome, D., Beech, E. and Rivers, M. (2018) The Red List of Fraxinus. BGCI. Richmond, UK.
Jerome, D., Beckman, E., Kenny, L., Wenzell, K., Kua, C.-S., Westwood, M. The Red List of US Oaks. The Morton Arboretum. Lisle, IL (2017).