Dr. Marcy Litvak (PI)
Marcy is a Professor in the Biology Department of University of New Mexico.  She received her B.A. with honors in 1989 from Colorado College, and her Ph.D. in Plant Physiological Ecology in 1998 from the University of Colorado, Boulder.  Her research focus is on understanding how ecosystem processes vary across ecological gradients in semi-arid biomes.  She is particularly interested in quantifying how climate and disturbance alter carbon, water and energy dynamics in the Southwestern U.S.    

For more information:  CV (below picture), Google Scholar, or Research Gate.
​Contact info:  faculty web page

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Graduate Students

Alesia Hallmark, PhD Candidate:    
Alesia Hallmark is fascinated by the phenology and life histories of aridland species. These species have evolved to survive in some of the hottest, driest, and most unpredictable conditions. Using eddy covariance, remote sensing, long-term ecological data, and near-surface repeat digital photography, Alesia studies how aridland species, communities, and ecosystems survive and reproduce in these challenging conditions across an elevation gradient in the Rio Grande valley of New Mexico, with a focus on ecosystems within the Sevilleta Long-Term Ecological Research site. Originally from Oklahoma, Alesia attended Oklahoma State University, where she received Bachelor's degrees in Zoology and Botany, studying everything from bluebirds to native ferns. She then worked as the Supervisor of Undergraduate Laboratories at the University of Miami. In her free time, Alesia enjoys hiking, climbing, and photographing this beautiful state she now calls home with her trusty hound, Stella. 

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Amanda Liebrecht, PhD Candidate ​
Amanda's research focuses on piñon-juniper woodlands, exploring how both tree species respond to climate changes and large-scale mortality, and how tree-level responses compare to ecosystem-level responses. She got her bachelors in Biology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and during the last summer of her undergraduate, she came to UNM to do the REU program at the Sevilleta NWR, working with Dr. Litvak. She ended up loving the research and New Mexico, and decided to come join the lab as a Ph.D. student. Her research interests have evolved over time, from studying immune responses in seagrasses during her undergrad to studying understory vegetation as an REU to her current research at the tree and ecosystem level.

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Amanda Sacks, MS Student 
Originally from Brooklyn, Amanda spent summers camping and exploring the outdoors from Utah to Maine. She remained on the east coast where she received her B.A. in Environmental Studies with a minor in Botany from Connecticut College. Her experiences working in the mixed-hardwood forests of the eastern U.S. and the southwest desert of Nevada lead her to UNM where she studies ecosystem ecology, focusing on piñon-juniper woodlands. Currently a master's student, she is looking at whether extracellular enzyme activity changes with depth and cover type.

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Professional Staff

Dr. Cheng-Wei Huang is a post-doc with research expertise in the use of laboratory and field data, theoretical and numerical modeling studies to describe the biotic and abiotic pathways associated with the transport processes of atmospheric substances, such as aerosol particles and biologically active gases (e.g., CO2 and H2O).  His doctoral research focused on refining the descriptions of these dynamic processes that are commonly employed in the global climate models.  Currently, he is particularly interested in exploring the feedback cycle of coupled soil-plant-atmosphere system by means of empirical studies combined with physical- and biophysiological-based modelling tools.  This long-term research goal aligns to improve the understanding on how climate change impacts human societies and natural ecosystems, and their feedbacks to the climate.  This is the research need for mitigation and adaptation actions in water resources management, food supply management, ecosystem services, air quality control and climate change predictions.

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Steven Crisp, MS  is the lead technician in charge of maintaining instrumentation and keeping everything running on all 9 towers. He Received his BS and MS at the University of Colorado both in environmental engineering. His thesis led him to Antarctica for two field seasons studying the ephemeral stream dynamics of the McMurdo Dry Valleys. The thesis, "Quantifying long-term geomorphology of Antarctic streams" merged old school surveying techniques with new age LiDAR systems to be able to go back in time to map the stream channels. The debugging nature of this challenge allowed for an easy transition to this position at the University of New Mexico. He is currently awaiting a good snow. 

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Alex Moody, MS is the lab's data manager, working on QC, post-processing, archiving, and preliminary analyses of our eddy flux and environmental data. He received his BS in Quantitative Geoscience at Appalachian State University in 2011 and his MSc in Geological Sciences at University of Idaho in 2014. His research and field work has included stable isotopes of water to understand the effects of vegetation on streamflow in western NC, coastal ecohydrology in low-lying freshwater wetlands, geothermal reservoir characterization using geostatistical models of borehole fractures.

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Robert Mullin, BS   is the lead technician on the project to examine hydrologic tipping points in PJ woodlands.  He received his BS in Environmental Science with a focus on resource management and ecology from Bucknell University in 2011. Previously, Bobby served as the ecological technician at the carbon flux study sites. Bobby’s previous research experience involves the sustainable use of water resources, watershed scale mapping of invasive freshwater bivalve species, and also a forest inventory and diet study of an endemic primate species in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Prior to joining the lab, and moving to New Mexico, Bobby worked in the environmental consulting industry. He focused on groundwater restoration, pollution control and environmental regulatory compliance in southwestern Pennsylvania. 

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Andrea Urioste, BS  joined the Litvak team in May 2015 and since then has collected a variety of data out in the field as well as participated in seasonal field surveys, in which she analyzes the data in the lab. She graduated from UNM in May 2016 with a Bachelors of Science in Biology with a concentration in Conservation Biology. She enjoys being outdoors, doing yard work and drinking coffee. 

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Missy Bacigalupa, BS  Missy received her BS in Biology from UNM in 2016.   She started working in this lab as a student on the field crew and now is in charge of the crew collecting and analyzing ecological data to inform conclusions about the flux tower measurements. This data centers around carbon sequestration in living and dead plant matter, as well as the timing of climate-related life cycle events in plants.

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Past Lab Members

Huge shout out to all the people who have worked in the Litvak Lab in the past and who poured an enormous amount of time and energy into building up our flux tower gradient and datasets.   It would not have been possible without their enormous efforts.  They are listed here in no particular order.  

Graduate Students

Dan Krofcheck, PhD
M. Shawn Brumbaugh, PhD
​Ann Thijs, PhD
Tamara Basham, PhD
Michelle Nuanez, MS
Daniel Brese, MS Plan II
​Amy Bennett, MS Plan II

Postdocs

Krista Anderson Teixera
Andy Fox
Tim Hilton
Greg Maurer
Dan Krofcheck
Rob Pangle
​Laura Morillas Gonzalez
Mike Fuller

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Lead Instrument Technicians

Andy Hawk
Leo Stoscheck
Skyler Hackley
Jonathan Furst
Christopher Russell

Lead Ecology Technicians

Margaret Schluter
Stephanie Schmiege
​Christy Lowney

Field Technicians and Crew

Laura Pages Barcelo
Grady Ball
​Sarah Lujan
Pavel Vahkhlamov
​Emma Elliot-Smith
Anita Enriquez
Tallie Segel
Eva Detweiler-Robinson

Teresa Conway
Kelly Williamson
​Caitlin Wolf
Gaea McGahee
​Nate Ritz
​Cecilia Payan
​Shaila Cochran

Sarah Hicks Dean
Kathryn Harris
Devon Fisher-Chavez
​Thommy Thompson
​Nina Vakhlamova
Sabrina McNew
​Ryan Evansen
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