Physiology and Ecology of Pines Worldwide

Daniel Johnson is a professor of tree physiology and forest ecology in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia. He received his undergraduate and Master’s degrees from North Carolina State University with a focus on the biochemistry of plants. He received his PhD from Wake Forest University where he focused on the physiology and ecology of high-altitude conifers. After finishing his PhD, he moved to Corvallis, Oregon to do a postdoc focused on conifer tree water relations. He eventually made his way to the University of Idaho where he continued his work on conifer tree physiology and ecology. After four cold years in Idaho, he moved to the University of Georgia. He currently teaches undergraduate and graduate classes, mentors graduate students, and explores his scientific passions: tree water relations, tree responses to abiotic stress, and impacts of climate change on forests. 

Jean-Christophe Domec is a distinguished professor and forest scientist whose work explores how trees cope with drought, climate stress, and management practices. He earned his engineering degree in forestry from Bordeaux Sciences Agro and a master’s in wood science from the University of Bordeaux/ENGREF, before venturing across the Atlantic to complete a PhD in forest ecology and plywood science at Oregon State University (go Beavers). His career reflects a successful case of assisted migration between France (Bordeaux Sciences Agro) and the United States (Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment), mixing the best of both research ecosystems and proving that adaptation isn’t just for trees. Actively involved in the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS), he contributes to Europe’s long-term monitoring of greenhouse gases and ecosystem fluxes. He leads research within the ISPA EcoFun and AGROFOR teams at INRAE Bordeaux, supervises a forest’s worth of students, and teaches courses on wood anatomy, tree function, forest ecology, and the art of turning science into publishable prose. His integrative and collaborative approach unites wood traits, field ecology, and ecofriendly management to guide sustainable forestry practices and climate-change adaptation strategies; all while reminding us that even trees have their limits when the world heats up.

Professor Ülo Niinemets is Head of the Department of Crop Science and Plant Biology at the Estonian University of Life Sciences and member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. His work broadly addresses the question of what determines vegetation distribution on the globe, emphasizing plant adaptation and acclimation to their environment in current and future conditions and functional relationships and trade-offs between leaf structure and function. He has extensively worked on conifer responses to light and nutrient availability, looking at how acclimation alters needle structure, chemical composition and photosynthetic activity, and what traits drive conifer species differentiation across environmental gradients. He has further advanced woody species shade, drought and waterlogging tolerance rankings for the entire woody flora of Norther Hemisphere, and linked the tolerance scores to leaf structure/function relationships and contributed to the development of the concept of stress tolerance biomes. This information has allowed to demonstrate that global-change-dependent changes in species composition constitute a major way of community acclimation, and that assessments of plant productivity in future environments must include species ecological potentials and associated suites of structural, chemical and physiological traits.