Matthew Bowker

Matt Bowker (he/him) has broad interests within ecology. He is both a soil and plant ecologist, and works in applied and fundamental science settings, in many ecosystem and community types including forests, rangelands and deserts. His research has spanned multiple levels of organization – organisms, populations, communities, ecosystems, landscapes – and has ranged in scale from microcosm to global.

The unifying thread in the majority of his research to date has been his long-term fascination with the dryland ecosystems of the world and their sustainable use. He has conducted research in most western US states, most of the major North American deserts and semi-arid ecoregions, in addition to drylands of Spain, Australia and Mexico and desert-like degraded regions of Iceland.
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By addressing fundamental questions about dryland ecosystem function, and employing a from-the-ground-up soil-focused approach to dryland restoration, Bowker hopes to enable better understanding and wiser use of rapidly changing dryland biomes