Forest disturbance and fragmentation

I am interested in the processes that govern plant population and gene pool dynamics and species composition in disturbed landscapes.

Disturbances are an important element influencing plant populations. Some of these disturbances are 'natural' and endogenous to a stand, arising from such things as tree mortality and canopy opening following tree fall. Others are 'natural' and exogenous to the stand such as windthrow due to tornadoes. Human-mediated exogenous disturbances are increasingly a factor in many forests. Deforestation is common in many landscapes and can lead to forest fragmentation if remnant patches are left following clearing.

Although large-scale disturbances can be detrimental to communities and ecosystems, the event provides the opportunity to study the network structure of complex systems. What links form between organisms in their native state, how resilient are these links to perturbation, will new links form during recovery, and can we predict the biological response to disturbance based on simple rules of network organization?