Research in the lab is focused on plants and their environments. Ongoing projects work on a wide range of herbaceous and woody plants that inhabit ecosystems from the alpine tundra, to redwood and montane forests and coastal and valley grasslands of California, to tropical and temprate seasonally dry forests and savannas, to desert ecosystems.

All our projects focus on the physiology, ecology and evolutionary biology of wild plants. We research the basis of adaptation in individuals, the interactions between plants and their neighbors, pests, pathogens and mututalists, and investigate how plants shape ecosystem processes. Click here to explore specific examples of what the people in the lab are doing.

The research in the Dawson lab commonly uses a wide range of observations, experiments, measurement types, modeling and stable isotope analyses. The isotope research is done at the Center for Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry, part of the facilities available in the Department of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. This research and training facility is housed in rooms 1138 and 1140 in the Valley Life Sciences Building near the west entrance of the Berkeley campus.