Robert Peet
| Organization | |
|---|---|
| State | North Carolina |
| Title/Position | Research Professor |
| Department | Biology |
| Send e-mail | |
| US Eco Regions | Atlantic Highlands, Ozark/Ouachita-Appalachian Forests, Southeastern USA Plains |
| Wildland Fires |
Robert Peet is ResearchProfessor of Biology at UNC Chapel Hill. His work in ecoinformatics is advancing ecology through the development of international databases and data standards that allow new and broader forms of synthesis. His current research on the vegetation of the Southeastern United States includes on-going studies of the long-term dynamics of Southeastern forests, impacts of human-altered hydrology and siltation on floodplain ecosystems, compositional variation in fire-maintained Coastal Plain pinelands, and more generally factors influencing the composition and species diversity of terrestrial plant communities. Dr. Peet has contributed to the scientific community in numerous ways including founding the Journal of Vegetation Science, and serving as Secretary of the Ecological Society of America (1992-1995), President of the International Association for Vegetation Science (2007-2011) and Editor-in-Chief of Ecology and Ecological Monographs 1995-2000). Peet, one of the four cofounders of the ESA Vegetation Classification Panel, took the lead in developing the initial cyber infrastructure including VegBank, and was a coauthor of vegetation classification standards papers developed by the Panel. He currently serves on the US FGDC Vegetation Subcommittee, the Executive Committee of the ESA Vegetation Classification Panel and the Governing Board of the International Association for Vegetation Science. He is Chair of the Carolina Vegetation Survey, which has databased approximately 10,000 vegetation plots from the Southeastern US, and has offered those plots for use by others interested in furthering the USNVC and other conservation initiatives.
