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Kevin M.
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BiographyDr. Kevin Potter is research assistant professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, specializing in the population genetics, landscape ecology, and conservation biology of forest trees. He is stationed with the Forest Health Monitoring group at the USDA Forest Service’s research site in Research Triangle Park, where he is currently assessing the potential genetic effects of climate change on forest tree species and evaluating the health of forest tree communities from an evolutionary perspective. He earned his PhD in Forestry from NC State in 2006, with dissertation work focusing on the population genetics and conservation of Fraser fir (Abies fraseri), an endemic Southern Appalachian forest tree decimated by an exotic insect from Europe. He also completed a year-long postdoctoral fellowship with the Camcore cooperative at NC State, where he analyzed the population genetic diversity of Carolina hemlock (Tsuga caroliniana), eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), and ocote pine (Pinus oocarpa). Potter came to the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources by an unconventional route. His undergraduate degree from Drake University in Iowa was in journalism, and he worked as a newspaper reporter in Iowa and North Carolina for four years before joining the News Services staff at NC State. While writing and editing news releases about research at NC State, he decided that tackling natural resources research projects would be more interesting than writing about them – so he chose to pursue his masters and doctoral degrees, first on a part-time and then on a full-time basis. For his master’s degree in natural resources, he completed a watershed-scale analysis of the impact of land-cover changes on macrobenthic invertebrates in North Carolina streams. Last updated April 20, 2009 |
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