Kate Meyer

NSF Postdoctoral Associate (Visiting Assistant Professor)

Research Focus

Dynamical systems, mathematical ecology

Motivated by problems of environmental change, I am interested in how dynamic structures persist or change in the face of disturbances and uncertainty. I look beyond a dynamical system’s invariant sets to study the interaction between transient behaviors and disturbances. These questions tie to applications ranging from the effect of glacial meltwater on oceanic circulation to the effect of nutrient pollution and management on grassland community structure.  Answers to date have integrated a variety of topics, including nonautonomous control, Conley theory, and multivalued dynamics. 

Publications

  • Extinction debt repayment via timely habitat restoration, Theoretical Ecology, 1-9 (2018).
  • Quantifying resilience to recurrent ecosystem disturbances using flow-kick dynamics (with A. Hoyer-Leitzel, S. Iams, I. Klasky, V. Lee, S. Ligtenberg, E. Bussmann, and M. L. Zeeman), Nature Sustainability 1, 671-678 (2018).
  • Curve number approach to estimate monthly and annual runoff and baseflow (with A. J. Guswa and P. Hamel), Journal of Hydrologic Engineering 23, doi 10.1061/(ASCE)HE.1943-5584.0001606 (2018).
  • A mathematical review of resilience in ecology, Natural Resource Modeling 29, 339-352 (2016).