University of Denver Spring 2025

A laboratory for the future It’s obvious when talking with Martin that he’s a tree “stan,” especially for the green giants up near Mount Blue Sky, like Pinus aristata, or the Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine. “I love the spruce. I love the subalpine forests in Colorado,” he says excitedly. “There’s a couple bristlecone pine trees about 1,600 years old up there.” But Martin has dedicated his professional life to studying trees for more than just personal reasons. “At first, you do it because you love nature, you love forests, but eventually it will become much more abstract, and the question that drives you is, ‘ What’s going to happen with this unprecedented amount of global change?’” Martin’s study contributes to a growing set of observations that will spread widely among researchers. Colorado learns from what is happening in drier and hotter Arizona, and Arizona in turn learns from Mexico. As drought conditions occur more widely, the East Coast can learn from what is happening in the Western U.S., where conditions are generally more pronounced. “The West is really the laboratory for studying drought,” he says. Recently, Martin used the findings of the seedling study to help secure a $1.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation. In collaboration with Clemson University, researchers will compare drought dynamics in the Rocky and Great Smoky mountains and determine how tree stress chemistry may indicate whether a tree lives or dies in response to drought. By “peeking inside a leaf,” using emerging technology called chemical metabolomics, they’ll measure how leaves handle stress in real time, allowing for improved forecasts of forest health under changing conditions. Last summer, Martin and his students began by planting a controlled experimental garden at DU’s Kennedy Mountain Campus, one of the first research projects on the property. Martin expects results within the next five years. “The garden doesn’t look that exciting yet. But we’re going to have drought shelters, irrigation projects and some shade treatments,” explains Martin. “As far as many ecology projects go, it will look elaborate.” Until then, the significance of his work already outsizes the seedlings he studies, giving hope that the forests of tomorrow can thrive despite the challenges ahead.

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UNIVERSITY OF DENVER MAGAZINE | SPRING 2025