Kristina Anderson-Teixeira is a forest ecologist at the Smithsonian's Conservation Biology Institute's (SCBI) Conservation Ecology Center and at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s Center for Tropical Forest Science. She leads the ecosystems and climate program for the Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO), which is the world's only forest monitoring network making standardized measurements in all the world's major forest biomes. Her research focuses on interactions of forest ecosystems worldwide with Earth’s changing climate.
Along with collaborators at the Smithsonian and around the world, Anderson-Teixeira’s research shows how forests worldwide are responding to climate change and other anthropogenic pressures. Highlights include findings that larger trees suffer more during drought and that climate change alters forest recovery following disturbances such as fires. She has also conducted pioneering work on quantifying the climate regulation services of ecosystems, showing that clearing just 100 square feet of forest has roughly the same effect on climate as driving across the U.S.
