Todd Dawson

Research Description

Research in my group focuses on the interface between plants and their natural and human-impacted environments. The tools of physiological plant ecology, stable isotope biogeochemistry, ecohydrology and remote sensing are currently being applied towards the study and interpretation of these interfaces. Investigations draw upon a wide range of physiological methods, observations, experiments, modeling and the use of stable isotopes as avenues for improving our understanding of how the ecophysiological characteristics of plants are shaped by and respond to the environments they inhabit. Projects pay special attention to how aspects of plant form and function combine to permit adaptation to environmental variation, whether naturally or anthropogenically imposed, and how plants and their unique traits influence the structure and function of the communities and ecosystems they compose. Woody plants and forest systems are featured.

Education

PhD – Plant Ecophysiology, University of Washington, 1987

BA – Biology and Environmental Science, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1981

Teaching

IB 151/151L – Physiological Plant Ecology and laboratory

ESPM C227 – Stable Isotope EcologyESPM C225 – ‘Isotopics’ Graduate Reading Group

IB 400 – Training in Isotope Methods and Mass Spectrometry 

Current Research Themes:

• Exploring how the ecological and physiological characteristics of plants influence community and ecosystem processes (e.g. how the water, carbon and nutrient relations of plants may influence ecosystem hydrology and biogeochemistry);

• Elucidating the manner and limits of physiological tolerance to resource extremes and how this shapes adaptation;

• Examining at the fluxes and exchanges of materials such as carbon, water and nitrogen between organisms and their biotic and abiotic environments using novel stable isotope techniques;

• Determining the wide diversity of ways plant cope with acute environmental change;

• The ecophysiology of plant-plant and plant-microbial interactions

Selected Publications

Between 1985 and 2025 I have published 297 peer-reviewed papers, 17 book chapters and have edited five books. Below are some key papers from the past few years.

• 295. Gotsch, S.G., C.B. Williams and T.E. Dawson. 2025. Trait plasticity enables trees & shrubs to live as epiphytes throughout the coast redwood canopy. Ecosphere

• 294. Vaughan, D., N.M. Nadkarni, T.E. Dawson, L.E.L. Lowmanand S.G. Gotsch. 2025. Will epiphyte loss exacerbate climate change effects in tropical montane cloud forests?Agricultural and Forest Meteorology375:

• 293. Lloyd, M.K., R.A. Stein, B.E. Wortham, R.E. Dunn, D.E. Ibarra, T.E. Dawson and D.A. Stolper. 2025. Isotopic evidence for elevated photorespiration in the last glacial period. Nature Geosciences

• 292. Mohammadi, R.M, T.E. Dawson, C.R. Tiedeman, J.C. Stella and A. Ruhi. 2025. Groundwater and remotely sensed phenology reveal vulnerability of riparian trees to drought. Global Change Biology [doi//10.1111/gcb.70564].

• 291. Carchipulla-Morales, D., H. Corbett, D. Vaughan, S.G. Gotsch, T.E. Dawson, N. Nadkarni and L.E.L. Lowman. 2025. A novel model quantifies epiphyte-mediated temperature and water dynamics in a tropical montane cloud forest. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 374: [doi.org//10.1016/j.agformet.2025.110770].

• 290.Kui, L., Williams, J., Singer, M.B., Stella, J.C., Kibler, C.L., Dawson, T.E., Rohde, M.M., Lambert, A.M. and Roberts, D.A. 2025. Increased groundwater dependence of riparian vegetation in response to drought. Ecohydrology

• 289. Crutchfield-Peters, K.L., A.K. Tune, D.M. Rempe and T.E. Dawson. 2025 Linked nitrogen and carbon dynamics reveal pools and patterns in a weathered bedrock rhizosphere. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).

• 288. Muñoz-Villers, L.E., F. Holwerda, M.S. Alvarado-Barrientos, J. Geris and T.E. Dawson.  2025. Examining the complementarity in belowground water use between different varieties and ages of Arabica coffee plants and dominant shade tree species in an organic agroecosystem. Agricultural Water Management 307: [doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2024.109248].

• 287.Wilkening, J.V., T.E. Dawson and S.E. Thompson. 2025. Mind the data gap: Using a multi-measurement synthesis for identifying the challenges and opportunities in studying plant drought response and recovery. Plant, Cell & Environment 48: 3673-3690[doi.org/10.1111/pce.15349]

• 285.Vaughan, D., C.B. Williams, N.M. Nadkarni, T.E. Dawson, D. Draguljic, R.R. Nӕsborg, and S.G. Gotsch. 2024. Drought response strategies of vascular epiphytes in isolated pasture trees in a Costa Rican tropical montane landscape. American Journal of Botany [doi: 10.1002/ajb2.16423].

• 284.Wilkening, J.V., X. Feng, T.E. Dawson and S.E. Thompson. 2024. Different roads, same destination: The shared future of plant ecophysiology and ecohydrology. Plant, Cell & Environment[doi.org/10.1111/pce.].

• 283. Sanchez-Martinez, P., D.D. Ackerly, J. Martínez-Vilalta, M. Mencuccini, K. Dexter, and T.E. Dawson. 2024.A framework to study and predict functional trait syndromes using phylogenetic and environmental data. Methods in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

• 280. Lloyd, M.K., R.A. Stein, D.E. Ibarra, R.S. Barclay, S.L. Wing, D.W. Stahle, T.E. Dawson and D.A. Stolper. 2023. Isotopic clumping in wood as a proxy for photorespiration in trees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).

• 279. Wu, Angelica, L.D.L Anderegg, T.E. Dawson and A. Trugman. 2023. Leaf trait coordination and variation of blue oak across topo-environmental scales. Tree Physiology43: 2098-2108.

• 278.Hermes, A., M. Logan, B. Poulin, A. McKenna, T.E. Dawson, T. Borch and E-L. Hinckley. 2023. Agricultural sulfur applications alter the quantity and composition of dissolved organic matter from field-to-watershed scales. Environmental Science & Technology

• 277. Wilkening, J., R. Skelton, X. Feng, T.E.. Dawson and S.A. Thompson. 2023. Exploring within-plant hydraulic trait variation: A test of the Vulnerability Segmentation HypothesisPlant, Cell & Environment[doi.org/10.1111/pce].

• 275. Roddy, A.B., C.M. Guilliams, P.V.A. Fine, S. Mambelli, T.E. Dawson, and K.A. Simonin. 2023. Flowers are leakier than leaves but cheaper to build. New Phytologist239: 2076-2082.

• 274. Skelton, R.P., A.G. West, D. Butler and T.E. Dawson. 2023. Consistent responses to moisture stress within diverse mountain fynbos communities revealed by multi-year in situ physiological measurementsOecologia [doi.org/10.1007/s00442-023-05326-9]

• 273.Dawson, T.E. Sourcing the water that makes up tree biomass. 2022. Tree Physiology (Commentary) 42: 2149-2152 [doi.10.1093/treephys/tpac109].

• 272. Matos, I.S., O. Binks, C.B. Eller, B.B. Zorger, P. Meir, T.E. Dawson and B.H.P. Rosado. 2022. Revisiting plant hydrological niches: the importance of atmospheric resources for ground-roots plants. Journal of Ecology

• 271. Hermes, A.I., T.E. Dawson and E-L.S. Hinckley. 2022. Sulfur isotopes reveal agricultural changes to the modern sulfur cycle. Environmental ResearchLetters17: [doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac6683].

• 269. Gotsch, S.G., C.B. Williams, R. Bicaba, R. Cruz‑de Hoyos, A. Darby, K. Davidson, M. Dix, V. Duarte, A. Glunk, L. Green, B. Ferguson, K. Munoz‑Elizondo, J.G. Murray, I. Picado‑Fallas, R.R. Nӕsborg, T.E. Dawson and N. Nadkarni. 2022. Trade‑offs between succulent and non‑succulent epiphytes underlie variation in drought tolerance and avoidance. Oecologia [doi.org/10.1007/s00442-022-05140-9].

• 268. Anderegg, L.D.L., D.M Griffith, J. Cavender-Bares, W.J. Riley, J.A. Berry, T.E. Dawson and C.J. Still. 2022. Representing plant diversity in land models: An evolutionary approach to make ‘Functional Types’ more functional. Global Change Biology28:. 

• 267. Keen, R.M., S.L. Voelker, S-Y. Simon Wang, B.J. Bentz, M. Goulden, C.R. Dangerfield, C.C. reed, S.M. Hood, A.Z. Czank, T.E. Dawson, A.G, Merschel, and C.J. Still.2022.Changes in tree drought sensitivity provided early warning signals to the California drought and forest mortality event. Global Change Biology28: 1119-1132 [doi.org 10.1111/gcb.15973].

• 266. Willing, C., G. Pierroz, A. Guzman, L.D.L. Anderegg, C. Gao, D. Coleman-Derr, J. Taylor, T. Bruns and T.E. Dawson. 2021. Keep your friends close: Landscape heterogeneity drives soil fungal community structure, but biotic filtering and compartmentalization ensure that redwoods maintain key symbionts. Ecology Letters [doi.org/10.1111/ele.13886].

• 263. Koçillari, L., M.E. Olson, S. Suweis, R.P. Rocha, A. Lovison, F. Cardin, T.E. Dawson, A. Echeverria, A. Farjodo, S. Lechthler, C.R. Marcati, C. Martinez-Perez, K-F. Chung, J.A. Rosell, A. Segovia-Rivas, C.B. Williams, E. Petrone-Mendoza, A. Rinaldo, T. Anfodilio, J. Banavar and A. Maritan. 2021. The widened pipe model of plant hydraulic evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA)118: doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2100314118.

• 262. Bilir, T.E., I. Fung and T.E. Dawson. 2021.Slope-aspect induced climate differences influence how water is exchanged between the land and the atmosphere. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences [doi.org/10.1029/2020JG006027].

• 261. Williams, C.B, R.R. Naesborg, A.R. Ambrose, W.L. Baxter, G.W. Koch and T.E. Dawson. 2021. The dynamics of stem water storage in the Earth’s largest trees – Sequoiadendron giganteumTree Physiology

• 259. Niespolo, E.M., W.D. Sharp, G. Avery and T.E. Dawson. 2021. Early, intensive marine resource exploitation by Middle Stone Age humans at Ysterfontein-1 rockshelter, South Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 118: [doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2020042118]. 

• 258. Skelton, R.P., L.D.L. Anderegg, J. Diaz, M.M. Kling, P. Papper, L.J. Lamarque, S. Delzon, T.E. Dawson and D.D. Ackerly. 2021. Evolutionary relationships between drought-related traits and climate shape large hydraulic safety margins in North American Oaks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).

• 255. Willing, C.E., G. Pierroz, D. Coleman-Derr and T.E. Dawson. 2020. The generalizability of water-deficit on bacterial community composition; Site-specific water-availability predicts the bacterial community associated with coast redwood roots. Molecular Ecology 29: 4721-4734.

• 254. Hahm, W.J., D.M. Rempe, D.N. Dralle, T.E. Dawson and W.E. Dietrich. 2020. Oak transpiration drawn from the weathered bedrock vadose zone in the summer dry season. Water Resources Research

• 253. Dralle, D., W.J. Hahm, D.M. Rempe, A.N. Karst, L.D.L. Anderegg, S.E. Thompson, T.E. Dawson, and W.E. Dietrich. 2020. Plants as sensors: vegetation response to rainfall predicts root-zone water storage capacity in Mediterranean climatesEnvironmental Research Letters

• 252. Von Freyberg, J., S.T. Allen, C. Grossiord and T.E. Dawson. 2020. Plant and root zone water isotopes are difficult to measure, explain, and predict: some practical recommendations for determining plant water sources. Methods in Ecology and Evolution11: 1352-1367 [doi: 0.1111/2041-210X.13461].

• 251. Williams, C.B., J. Murray, A. Glunk, T.E. Dawson, N. Nadkarni, and S.G. Gotsch. 2020. Vascular epiphytes show low physiological resistance and high recovery capacity to episodic, short-term drought in Monteverde, Costa RicaFunctional Ecology [doi: 10.1111/1365-2435.13613]

• 250. Fontes, C.G., P.V.A. Fine, F. Wittmann, P.F. Bittencourt, M.T. Piedade, N. Higuchi, J.Q. Chambers, and T.E. Dawson. 2020. Convergent evolution of tree hydraulic traits in Amazonian habitats: implications for community assemblage and vulnerability to droughtNew Phytologist227: