Rebecca Montgomery

College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences
Department of Forest Resources
612-624-7249
rebeccam@umn.edu

Rebecca is Associate Professor in the Department of Forest Resources. She started her current position in 2004 after completing post-doctoral work at the University of Minnesota and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Montgomery has a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Connecticut (1999) and an A. B. in Biology from Occidental College (1994).

Dr. Montgomery’s research interests include forest ecology, plant functional ecology, global change, and evolutionary ecology. She has worked in tropical, temperate, and boreal ecosystems. She serves as major coordinator for the Forest Resources undergraduate degree and teaches Forest Ecology, Ecology of Managed Systems and a 3-week summer field course in Northern Forests Field Ecology. She has received several awards for excellence in undergraduate teaching. She has traveled extensively and has forest research experience in numerous countries including: Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, Brazil, French Guiana, and Papua New Guinea. Current research projects focus on three major areas of scholarship (1) climate change, especially response of terrestrial ecosystems to elevated temperature; (2) phenology, the timing of biological events in the life cycle of plants and animals; and (3) species interactions, including competition, facilitation and pest-pathogen-plant interactions.

See Montgomery’s faculty page for more info.

Portrait: Rebecca Montgomery.

BEYOND THE BIO

  • Fun fact:
    I used to competitively race outrigger canoes and have paddled the open ocean channel between Molokai and Oahu
  • Environmental Hero:
    My late grandfather, Clifford Olson, a farmer from western North Dakota
  • Interesting Experience:
    Hiking seven hours along muddy trails through the New Guinea rainforest with a six month old baby - our destination was a remote village that hosts ecological research
  • Favorite Fair food:
    Definitely the scotch egg