Emerging Plant Disease and Global Food Security Robert Scheller
Professor, Forestry and Environmental Resources
Robert Scheller joined NC State in August 2017 as a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster hire in Emerging Plant Disease and Global Food Security. He is a professor of landscape ecology in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources and the director of the Dynamic Ecosystems and Landscapes Lab. Scheller’s research focuses on landscape change: how landscapes have changed, how they will change and why it matters. Specifically, he examines the drivers of landscape change, specifically in relation to climate change. Scheller and his lab focus on the roles of management (our social capacity to mitigate undesirable change), the biota (plant and animal abundance on the landscape), and the spatial distribution of change across landscapes. His research is data-driven and deploys advanced technology to forecast landscape change.
Scheller grew up in Minnesota and received his Bachelor of Science in biology from the University of Minnesota and master’s and doctoral degrees in forest ecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published more than 75 manuscripts and book chapters and has received funding from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S.Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Geological Survey, the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, The Nature Conservancy and others.
