Etienne Laliberté

Personal webpage

PhD student

Principal supervisor
David A. Norton

Associate supervisors
Jason Tylianakis (University of Canterbury)
David Scott (AgResearch, Lincoln)

Contact details
Email: etiennelaliberte@gmail.com
Phone: +64 3 366 7001 ext. 8365

Thesis title
Agricultural intensification, plant biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and resilience in grazing systems

Project description
Agricultural intensification, one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss, is likely to increase in grazing systems worldwide because of the forecasted doubling in global food demand by 2050. My PhD thesis will focus on the effects of intensifying rangeland management (fertilisation, irrigation, and grazing intensity) on plant biodiversity (species and functional diversity), ecosystem properties (above- and belowground net primary production, litter decomposition, and soil respiration), and associated ecosystem services (forage production, native biodiversity conservation, and carbon sequestration) in New Zealand high country grasslands. In addition, I am particularly interested in exploring how intensification impacts the diversity of plant functional response traits, which is a critical component of ecosystem resilience to unexpected change.

Education
2006: MSc (Ecology), Département des sciences biologiques, Université de Montréal, Canada
2002: BSc (Botany), McGill University, Montréal, Canada

Publications

Laliberté, E., Paquette, A., Legendre, P. and A. Bouchard. 2009. Assessing the scale-specific importance of niches and other spatial processes on beta diversity: a case study from a temperate forest. Oecologia doi:10.1007/s00442-008-1214-8 [PDF] [HTML]

Laliberté, E. 2008. Analyzing or explaining beta diversity? Comment. Ecology 89: 3232-3237 [PDF] [HTML] [Endnote] [BibTeX]

Laliberté, E., Cogliastro, A., and A. Bouchard. 2008. Spatiotemporal patterns in seedling emergence and early growth of two oak species direct-seeded on abandoned pastureland. Annals of Forest Science 65: 407. [PDF] [HTML] [Endnote] [BibTeX]

Laliberté, E., Bouchard, A., and A. Cogliastro. 2008. Optimizing hardwood reforestation in old-fields: the effects of treeshelters and environmental factors on tree seedling growth and physiology. Restoration Ecology 16: 270-280 [PDF] [HTML] [Endnote] [BibTeX]

Paquette, A., Laliberté, E., Bouchard, A., de Blois, S., P. Legendre, and J. Brisson. 2007. Lac Croche understory vegetation data set (1998-2006). Ecology 88: 3209 [PDF] [HTML] [Endnote] [BibTex]