Lindsey is a global change ecologist focused on issues at the intersection of climate, plant function, agriculture, land-use, and conservation. She is broadly trained in plant biology, community and ecosystem ecology, and coupled human-natural systems and has worked in both natural and managed systems such as meadows, rangelands, and croplands. During her time as a postdoctoral researcher with the Global Landscapes Initiative at the University of Minnesota, she analyzed the effects of climate variability on global pasture health and helped to identify and map degraded agricultural lands as part of a science advisory team for The Nature Conservancy. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher with Nathan Mueller at the University of California Irvine focused on climate change adaptation in major global food crops.

Advances in modern agriculture have improved crop productivity over time and allowed for crop area expansion, but how does this expansion relate to the biophysical limitations of plant growth? We use high-resolution datasets of crop harvested areas, climate, and edaphic variables to assess changes in the fundamental niches of maize, wheat, rice, and soy from 1975 – 2010.

Using global satellite measures of greenness and climatic data, we find that global pastures experience higher precipitation variability than the rest of the land surface, and that this variability has increased since the beginning of the century, threatening global meat and milk production.