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D. W. Ivans, leading the field trip to Woodpecker Hill |
CONFERENCE UNDERWRITERS
- Entergy
- Magnolia Charitable Trust
- Temple-Inland Foundation
SPONSORS
- Beaumont Convention & Visitors Bureau
- Big Thicket Association
- Big Thicket National Preserve (National Park Service)
- Gulf Coast Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (NPS and Texas A&M University)
- Lamar University Center for the Study of the Big Thicket
- The Nature Conservancy
- Texas Parks & Wildlife Department
- U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
- USDA Southern Research Station
- USGS National Wetlands Research Center
- William Marsh Rice University
- Western National Parks Association
SPECIAL RECOGNITION OF DR. PAUL HARCOMBE
The Planning Committee of the Big Thicket/West Gulf Coastal Plain Science Conference would like to recognize Dr. Paul A. Harcombe for his instrumental role and continued commitment to the Conference. Paul has spent much of his career studying the ecology of the Big Thicket and we would like to take this opportunity to honor his efforts that have been so important to the conservation and management of the Big Thicket.
Paul received his B.S. at Michigan State University (1967) and his PhD from Yale University (1973). His dissertation work focused on nutrient cycling and secondary succession in tropical ecosystems. In 1972, he joined the faculty at Rice University in the Biology Department. He was one of the founding members of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He is a forest ecologist specializing in the structure and dynamics of southeastern forests, particularly in the Big Thicket. He has produced numerous publications on the effects of environmental disturbances, such as flood, fire, and wind, on different plant communities and how these factors affect the distribution of forest types on a landscape level.
Dr. Harcombe is co-director and co-founder of the Center for the Study of Environment and Society (at Rice University), a faculty affiliate of the Environmental and Energy Systems Institute (at Rice University), and is a member of the Ecological Society of America and the International Association for Vegetation Science (IVAS). In 1995, he hosted the Annual Symposium of IAVS at Rice University, which was also the first time the association met in the United States. He has also served as an Associate Editor for numerous scientific journals.
Dr. Harcombe has contributed to many local and national conservation organizations, including serving on the board of the Big Thicket Association, the Big Thicket National Heritage Trust, and the Board of Trustees for the Texas Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. He has also served as a member of the Flora of Texas Consortium. In 1999, he was the recipient of the R.E. Jackson award from the Big Thicket Association for his lifetime contributions to the scientific study of local ecosystems. He received a Charles W. Bullard Fellowship from Harvard University for the study of Texas forests.
Paul has always been willing and anxious to provide support for conservation throughout the Neches River Basin and eastern Texas. He has provided advice and advocacy for the conservation of the Neches River and Trinity National Wildlife Refuges. He has lent his expertise and scientific credibility to many other efforts to preserve and properly manage diverse sites within the West Gulf Coastal Plain.
"Years ago, Paul adopted the Thicket as his intellectual challenge and he set the ambitious goal of trying "to figure out the Thicket" before he quits. I suspect Paul would agree that there are still puzzles and challenges. But no one has a better understanding of the big picture, the landscape relationships and environmental controls of the different plant communities of the region. In addition, Paul and his students and colleagues have published extensively in the scientific literature on the role of fire in the uplands, of flooding in the river bottoms, of the interplay between large canopy openings caused by major windstorms vs. the death of individual trees in tree regeneration dynamics, and more generally on the population dynamics of seedlings, saplings, and tree populations. Another important dimension to Paul's contributions to the Big Thicket region is his long and close association with the National Park Service staff. Thanks in large part to Paul, the Big Thicket staff have excellent descriptive information about the plant communities in the Preserve which means the staff have excellent base maps and inventory on which to base management plans and monitoring. With Paul's impending retirement, the Big Thicket will lose one of its most distinguished and dedicated students."
—Dr. Peter Marks, Professor, Cornell University, a close colleague, research collaborator, and good friend of Paul's
By dedicating his career to long-term studies, Dr. Harcombe has developed a deep understanding of the factors controlling the community dynamics within the Big Thicket. Not only has his work provided general insights into forest dynamics that have been of interest to scientists around the world, it inspires others to continue to work to expand our knowledge of this biologically diverse ecoregion.
