KAITLIN KIMMEL
ECOLOGIST
I am postdoc at the University of Colorado Boulder working with Laura Dee and the Grasslands Monitoring Team in Minnesota. I recently held a post-doctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University working with Meghan Avolio and Paul Ferraro.
As an ecologist, I am interested in how human actions change many aspects of biological diversity and the consequences of these changes. I use both empirical data and theoretical models to explore these topics.
I am also interested in how ecologists do our research. I am probing into how we think about causality, how we conduct replicable research, and other common assumptions ecologists tend to make.
RESEARCH
Below are some of my core research areas. Please look at my research page for more detailed information.
CORRE DATABASE
I currently manage the CoRRE (Community Responses to Resources Experiments) database. In 2020, I added over 30 new experiments. I am also working on making our data cleaning pipeline more reproducible.
HOW ECOLOGY IS DONE
I often find myself asking, "why do we assume that?", when thinking about how ecologists conduct their studies. I have recently began to probe at some of these assumptions to see how they impact the inferences ecologists are making.
BIODIVERSITY IN A CHANGING WORLD
I am interested in understanding the causes and consequences of changes in biodiversity. This has always been my main passion as an ecologist. I explore this topic using long-term experimental data and by developing theoretical models.