I am fascinated by how plants and vegetated ecosystems function, and I am concerned about the trajectory of anthropogenic climatic change. In my research, I apply diverse methods and synthesize disparate data to address two main questions:
How does climatic stress affect plant demography and ecosystem fluxes of carbon, water, and energy?
How can models and measurements be improved to afford a clearer understanding of plant and ecosystem dynamics in a changing world?
He, Q. A.P. Williams, M.R. Johnston, C.S. Juang, and B. Wang. 2025. Influence of time-averaging of climate data on estimates of atmospheric vapor pressure deficit and inferred relationships with wildfire area in the western United States. Geophysical Research Letters. doi:10.1029/2024GL113708.
Johnston, M.R., M.L. Barnes, Y. Priesler, W.K. Smith, J.A. Biederman, R.L. Scott, A.P. Williams, and M.P. Dannenberg. 2025. Effects of hot vs. dry vapor pressure deficit on ecosystem carbon and water fluxes. Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences. doi:10.1029/2024JG008146.
Dannenberg, M.P., G.J. McCabe, E.K. Wise, M.R. Johnston, D.N. Huntzinger, and A.P. Williams. 2025. Recent increases in Missouri River streamflow driven by combined effects of climate variability, land-use change, and elevated CO2. AGU Advances. doi:10.1029/2024AV001432.
Kannenberg, S., F. Babst, M.L. Barnes, A. Cabon, M.P. Dannenberg, M.R. Johnston, and W. Anderegg. 2025. Stand density and local climate drive allocation of GPP to aboveground woody biomass. New Phytologist. doi: 10.1111/nph.20414.
Pierrat, Z., T. Magney, W. Richardson, B. Runkle, J. Diehl, X. Yang, W. Woodgate, W. Smith, M.R. Johnston, Y. Ginting, G. Koren, L. Albert, C. Kibler, B. Morgan, M. Barnes, A. Uscanga, C. Devine, M. Javadian, K. Meza, T. Julitta, G. Tagliabue, M. Dannenberg, M. Antala, C. Wong, A. Santos, K. Hufkens, J. Marrs, A. Stovall, Y. Liu, J. Fisher, J. Gamon, and K. Cawse-Nicholson. 2024. Proximal remote sensing: An essential tool for bridging the gap between high resolution ecosystem monitoring and global ecology. New Phytologist. doi:10.1111/nph.20405.
Ho, J.Y.*1, M.R. Johnston1, M.P. Dannenberg, A. Cabon, and P.R. Moorcroft, 2024. Sensitivity of sub-annual grey pine (Pinus sabiniana) stem growth to water supply and demand in central California. Dendrochronologia. doi:10.1016/j.dendro.2024.126253. *undergraduate advisee 1 co-lead authors
Novick, K.A., D. Ficklin, C. Grossiord, A.G. Konings, J. Martinez-Vilalta, W. Sadok, A.T., Trugman, A.P. Williams, A.J. Wright, J.T. Abatzoglou, M.P. Dannenberg, P. Gentine, K. Guan, M.R. Johnston, L.E.L. Lowman, D.J.P. Moore, and N.G. McDowell. 2024. The impacts of rising vapor pressure deficit in natural and managed ecosystems. Plant, Cell, & Environment. doi:10.1111/pce.14846.
Scott, R., M.R Johnston, J.F. Knowles, N. MacBean, K. Mahmud, M.C. Roby, and M.P. Dannenberg. 2023. Interannual variability of spring and summer monsoon growing season carbon exchange at a semiarid savanna over nearly two decades. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. doi:10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109584.
Dannenberg, M.P., and M.R. Johnston. 2023. Effects of eastern vs. central Pacific El Niño on Northern Hemisphere photosynthetic seasonality. Environmental Research: Climate. doi:10.1088/2752- 5295/accb02.
Dannenberg, M.P., M.L. Barnes, W.K. Smith, M.R. Johnston, S.K. Meerdink, X. Wang, R.L. Scott, and J.A. Biederman. 2023. Upscaling dryland carbon and water fluxes with artificial neural networks of optical, thermal, and microwave satellite remote sensing. Biogeosciences. doi:10.5194/bg-20-383-2023.
Dannenberg, M.P., D. Yan, M.L. Barnes, W.K. Smith, M.R. Johnston, R. Scott, J.A. Biederman, J.F. Knowles, X. Wang, T. Durman, M.E. Litvak, J.S. Kimball, A.P. Williams, and Y. Zhang. 2022. Exceptional heat and atmospheric dryness amplified losses of primary production during the 2020 U.S. Southwest hot drought. Global Change Biology. doi:10.1111/gcb.16214.
Johnston, M.R., A. Andreu, J. Verfaillie, D. Baldocchi, and P. Moorcroft. 2022. What lies beneath: Vertical temperature heterogeneity in a Mediterranean woodland savanna. Remote Sensing of Environment. doi:10.1016/j.rse.2022.112950.
Johnston, M.R., A. Andreu, J. Verfaillie, D. Baldocchi, M.P. Gonzalez-Dugo, and P. Moorcroft. 2021. Measuring surface temperatures in a woodland savanna: Opportunities and challenges of thermal imaging in an open-canopy system. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. doi:10.1016/j.agrformet.2021.108484.
Fer, I., A. K. Gardella, A.N. Shiklomanov, S.P. Serbin, M.G. De Kauwe, A. Raiho, M.R. Johnston, A. Desai, T. Viskari, T. Quaife, D.S. LeBauer, E.M. Cowdery, R. Kooper, J.B. Fisher, B. Poulter, M.J. Duveneck, F.M. Hoffman, W. Parton, J. Mantooth, E.E. Campbell, K.D. Haynes, K. Schaefer, K.R. Wilcox, M.C. Dietze. 2020. Beyond modeling: A roadmap to community cyberinfrastructure for ecological data-model integration. Global Change Biology. doi:10.1111/gcb.15409.
Ettinger, A.K., I. Chuine, B.I. Cook, J.S. Dukes, A.M. Ellison, M.R. Johnston, A.M. Panetta, C.R. Rollinson, Y. Vitasse, and E.M. Wolkovich. 2019. How do climate change experiments alter plot-scale climate? Ecology Letters. doi:10.1111/ele.13223.
Richardson, A.D., K. Hufkens, T. Milliman, D.M. Aubrecht, M. Chen, J.M. Gray, M.R. Johnston, T.F. Keenan, S.T. Klosterman, M. Kosmala, E.K. Melaas, M.A. Friedl, and S. Frolking. 2018. Tracking vegetation phenology across diverse North American biomes using PhenoCam imagery. Scientific Data. doi:10.1038/sdata.2018.28.
Johnston, M.R., A.J. Elmore, K. Mokany, M. Lisk, and M.C. Fitzpatrick. 2017. Field-measured variables outperform derived alternatives in Maryland stream biodiversity models. Diversity and Distributions. doi:10.1111/ddi.12598.
Bret-Harte, M.S., M.C. Mack, G.R. Shaver, D.C. Huebner, M. Johnston, C.A. Mojica, M.C. Pizano, and J.A. Reiskind. 2013. The response of arctic vegetation and soils following an unusually severe tundra fire. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. doi:10.1098/rstb.2012.0490.
Please be in touch for PDFs of any of these articles – I’d be happy to send them your way.