About Dr. Nyberg's Research

Conservation has been based on a paradigm of protect more land, but this approach is not sufficient to maintain natural areas. What might be sufficient? REVITALIZATION is ecological engineering that attempts to counteract the impacts of human economic activity on native plants and animals. Diverse forms of knowledge are necessary to revitalize a natural area. I have worked with plants and animals. I have developed interests according to student interests and talents. My preferred research projects focus on understanding population dynamics in natural (field) contexts. Dennis Nyberg is Director of UIC's James Woodworth Prairie.

Current Projects in my lab include: 1) Describing the dynamics of plant invasions, primarily in Cook Co.; 2) Understanding mechanisms that promote plant invasions; 3) the Invertebrate community in in very short hydroperiod ephemeral ponds at Woodworth Prairie; 4) Site specific conservation planning; 5) Role of prairie crayfish in building soil. Projects I have an interest in include: 6) the development of algorithms to compare species lists of the same place from different times; 7) how tall plants need to grow to capture 99% of light, 8) development of procedures to map tree density as a continuous function of position; and 9) natural history of the prairie cicada, Okanagana balli, at the Woodworth Prairie.

Representative Publications

Pergams, O. R. W., W. M. Barnes, and D. Nyberg. 2003. Rapid change of mouse mitochondrial DNA. Nature 423:397.

Pergams, O. R. W. and D. Nyberg. 2005. Evaluating the predicted local extinction of a once common mouse. Conservation Biology 19:1312-1317.

Ammann, R. L. and D. W. Nyberg. 2005. Vegetation height and quality of original and reconstructed tallgrass prairies. Am. Midl. Nat. 154: 55-66.