Biography
Sean Michaletz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Botany and a member of the Biodiversity Research Centre at The University of British Columbia. His research group integrates the life and physical sciences to investigate the processes linking environmental variation to plant physiology, and how these processes scale up across levels of organization, from molecules to the biosphere. Much of the group’s research focuses on the influence of heat on plant physiology, including temperature responses, heat tolerance, and the consequences of extreme heat for plant performance, population processes, and ecosystem functioning. The group combines approaches from physics, chemistry, engineering, geoscience, and biology to develop mechanistic theory and models, which are parameterized and tested with laboratory and field data. They also coordinate the Forest MacroSystems network, an expanding global network of long-term field plots monitoring climate, plant ecophysiology, and vegetation dynamics across forest biomes. By integrating theory, experiments, and observations, Michaletz’s research aims to improve prediction of plant and ecosystem responses to climate change and to define the physical limits of plant life.
