Welcome!
Thank you for visiting my website. I am an ecologist interested in understanding the consequences of anthropogenic disturbances in ecosystems and assessing the effectiveness of conservation and management strategies.
Currently, I focus on prevention and early eradication efforts for managing plant invasions as the UF/IFAS Assessment coordinator. To do this, I use literature and expert based assessment tools to evaluate the invasion risk of non-native plant species that occur in Florida, new species proposed for introduction, and novel agricultural and horticultural selections, hybrids, and cultivars.
At the same time, I am studying how invasive plants, drought, and fires interact to shape native plant communities. This is part of a decade-long field experiment set up by my current supervisor Dr. S. Luke Flory and my analyses have shown how Imperata cylindrica (cogongrass) invasion and repeated fires can interact to harm native plant communities. Excitingly, this is the first study to our knowledge that shows experimental evidence for the fire-invasion cycle, where fire promotes the spread of invasive, fire-adapted plants by reshaping post fire recovery.
Seokmin Kim 