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Mike Jenkins is an Assistant Professor of Forest Ecology in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources (FNR) at Purdue University. Mike received a B.S. in Botany from Eastern Illinois University in 1989, a M.S. in Forestry from University of Missouri-Columbia in 1992, and a Ph.D. in Forest Ecology from Purdue University in 1998. Before returning to Purdue, he worked for ten years as a vegetation ecologist for the National Park Service (NPS) in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. While with the NPS, Mike collaborated on a range of research projects with scientists from across the country and currently holds adjunct appointments with four universities.
Mike’s research focuses on the interactions between disturbance and abiotic factors and their synergistic influence on ecosystem structure and function. Specifically, he is interested in how human-induced changes to native disturbance regimes and species pools have altered the distributions, interactions, and coexistence of species through changes in ecological processes. His current research projects include exotic disease effects on nutrient cycling, invasion dynamics of exotic plants following the restoration of native disturbance regimes, long-term response of understory plant communities to chronic herbivory, and acid deposition and soil chemistry as drivers of species distribution in high-elevation spruce-fir forests.