Jennifer Costanza

Contact Information: 320 Saunders Hall, costanza@unc.edu

Research Interests

• Disturbance ecology: landscape-disturbance interactions, including landscape-level controls on fire regime
• Landscape-level fire management and conservation
• Effects of past land-use on current vegetation and community structure
  

About Me

I was an undergraduate biology major at Indiana University with an initial interest in attending medical school. During my junior year, I studied in Adelaide, Australia and was exposed to their biodiversity and land conservation issues. So, in my senior year, I decided that ecology and conservation were my calling and began looking for a graduate program. Because I am a true college basketball fan, and IU’s team did not win any national championships while I was there, I decided to go to Duke University for graduate school. I got a Master of Environmental Management degree there, and was lucky enough to be on campus when the basketball team won the national title in 2001. While in the master’s program, I became hooked on GIS and after graduating, I worked for Tipton County, Tennessee government doing GIS and environmental work. However, I wanted to get back to my real interests of ecology and conservation, so I decided to go back to school starting in 2004. I must have picked the right school because I was here for Carolina’s national basketball championship in 2005.

So far, as a student in UNC’s Ecology Curriculum, I have been involved in several projects, including an analysis of nutrient production and deposition from animal and human sources throughout North Carolina, an assessment of water level change for Lake Powell, and an evaluation of disturbance effects on spruce-fir ecosystems in the Smoky Mountains. I am currently doing work for the NC Chapter of The Nature Conservancy on a landscape-scale fire management and conservation project in the Onslow Bight, Eastern North Carolina. Through this project and my studies, I have become interested in the relationship between the landscape, vegetation, and fire regime, and I hope to develop a related research project for my dissertation.

I enjoy road biking, hiking, camping, and spending time with my husband and dog.