Budding Restoration Ecologist Tracks Invasive Plants as Biological Station Undergraduate Research Fellow
PELLSTON, Mich. — When Étienne Nuñez saw the independent research opportunity pop up in her email in Nevada, she had no idea it would lead her to an unforgettable summer spent immersed in experimental grassland plots in northern Michigan.
The sophomore at the College of Southern Nevada, where she majors in environmental conservation, had opened a message from ECOLOG, which is hosted by the Ecological Society of America, when she came across a fully funded undergraduate research experience under the guidance of science mentors at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS).
From her laptop in Las Vegas, Nuñez immediately applied.
Several months and more than two thousand miles later, Nuñez was in a field along Douglas Lake in Pellston, working as a Biological Station Undergraduate Research Fellow and studying how invasive plants respond to environmental change.
“I love it here,” she said.
Nuñez is one of nine undergraduate students from across the country that UMBS selected for fully funded fellowship experiences conducting independent research projects during the 2026 field season at the historic campus spanning more than 10,000 forested acres surrounded by lakes, rivers and wetlands.
The Biological Station Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program, which is supported by UMBS donors, gives students a $5,500 stipend and the opportunity to pursue original research in field ecology under the guidance of world-class research scientists.
Nuñez is interested in environmental conservation and hopes to pursue a career in restoration ecology. Back home, she works part-time as a technician at the Desert Research Institute, supporting the work of other researchers.
In Pellston, Nuñez conducted her own independent field research for the first time.
The 2026 spring and summer field season offered a chance to explore questions central to the future of ecosystem repair: What happens after land is disturbed? Which plants come back? Which ones take over? And how might restoration efforts change as ecosystems respond to shifting nutrients, invasive species and human impacts?
She conducted her UMBS project within existing experimental plots that are a part of DRAGnet, which stands for Disturbance and Recovery Across Global Grasslands Network.
The long-term research plots are part of a global research network examining how grassland ecosystems respond to disturbance and nutrient addition. At UMBS, the study site is arranged in a grid of 25 plots, 5 replicates of 5 different treatments, each marked by white posts and measuring 5 meters by 5 meters.
The plots receive different treatments. Some were disturbed through the removal of biomass, tilling of soil and pulling of bracken rhizomes. Some receive fertilizer. Some receive both disturbance and fertilizer. Others are part of a nutrient-addition recovery treatment, where fertilizer is added for several years and then stopped so scientists can watch how the system responds. Control plots are left untreated for comparison
Each year, researchers return during the peak of the growing season to measure plant biomass, identify plant species, estimate how much space each species occupies, collect soil cores and measure how much sunlight reaches the ground. Those local measurements become part of a much larger database coordinated through the University of Minnesota, allowing scientists to compare results from grassland plots around the world.
For Nuñez, the research question was specific: How are invasive plants responding to these treatments?
“Disturbance and fertilizer both impact invasive plants, but their impact can vary by location,” Nuñez said.
Her undergraduate research project examined how a strong disturbance — removing plant material and tilling the soil — affected invasive species, especially when combined with fertilizer.
Her early data suggest that fertilizer may be more important than disturbance in shaping invasive plant presence at the site.
“The data suggest that fertilizer has a stronger impact than disturbance on invasive plants,” Nuñez said, adding that fertilizer can help vegetation recover quickly after material is removed.
The fertilized plots and the plots that were both fertilized and disturbed appeared similar in some ways, Nuñez said. Fertilizer also seemed to reduce overall species richness while leaving a higher proportion of invasive species. In other words, the total number of species declined, and invasive species made up more of what remained.
By contrast, disturbance alone produced a more complicated picture. There were more invasive species in disturbed plots, but there were also more non-invasive species. That meant invasives did not necessarily make up as large a proportion of the plant community.
Invasive plants appeared across many plots, making the data variable. But that complexity is part of what makes field research valuable.
Nuñez identified invasive plants by cross-referencing species found in the plots with invasive species records. Among the species at the site were spotted knapweed, mullein and Kentucky bluegrass. Some were easy to see, like purple-flowered spotted knapweed or tall mullein stalks. Others, especially grasses, were harder to pick out from the surrounding vegetation.
Nuñez’s project also connected to broader research underway at UMBS on carbon cycling.
This summer, Giovanna Munoz-Gonzalez, a second-year masters student at U-M in the Frontiers program in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, measured net ecosystem exchange in the DRAGNet plots using a clear plexiglass chamber placed over the ground. The chamber allowed researchers to measure carbon dioxide moving into plants through photosynthesis and carbon dioxide released from plants and soil organisms through respiration.
By shading the chamber at different levels, researchers could reduce photosynthesis at different light levels, simulating light levels across a day and into the night. They can use these levels to model an ecosystem's total energy capture and release back to the atmosphere. Comparing those measurements across different treatments helps scientists ask whether disturbance or fertilizer changes the way an ecosystem stores or releases carbon.
Nuñez found that sites with more invasive plants tended to have higher soil respiration. In other words, as invasive plants took over an area, the soil released more carbon dioxide. This matters because soil respiration is one of the main ways carbon moves from soils back into the atmosphere, so the finding offers a starting point for asking how and when invasive species can reshape the carbon cycle, specifically the exchange of carbon among plants, soils and the air.
For Karin Rand, one of Nuñez’s science mentors at UMBS, the DRAGNet plots offer a powerful way to study ecological change at multiple scales. At the plot level, researchers can see visual differences in plant communities. At the network level, the same measurements can contribute to a global understanding of how grasslands respond to disturbance and added nutrients.
“The project is still relatively young,” said Rand, a UMBS researcher and manager of the Classen Lab in U-M’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “Our UMBS site is in year five, and the larger network is working toward early analyses from the first several years of data. The goal is for the research to continue for about a decade, giving scientists a longer window into disturbance, recovery and ecosystem change.”
For Nuñez, the summer was both a research experience and a step toward the kind of work she hopes to do in the future. Restoration ecology requires thinking not only about what ecosystems look like now, but how they may recover or fail to recover under changing conditions.
She said she enjoys thinking about those interactions and about how restoration will happen in the years ahead.
The experience also showed her the importance of mentorship in science. Working with Rand and Dr. Aimée Classen, the director of UMBS and an ecosystem and global change ecologist, Nuñez gained the support needed to turn field observations into research questions, data and analysis.
“They’re incredible,” Nuñez said. “I literally wouldn’t have been able to do anything without them.”
“Undergraduate research is one of the most powerful ways students learn how science happens. They ask their own questions, work in the field, analyze data, and contribute to long-term studies that help us better understand environmental change” said Classen “Étienne did exactly this. She took her own original idea from conception all the way to completion, presenting her results and writing up a draft of a manuscript. An experience like this is life-changing. Being part of the science process helps students grow, and UMBS experiences like this turn students into scientists.”
The University of Michigan Biological Station serves as a gathering place to learn from the natural world, advance research and education, and inspire action. We leverage over a century of research and transformative experiences to drive discoveries and solutions to benefit Michigan and beyond.
Our vast campus engages all of the senses. Its remote, natural setting nurtures deep thought and scientific discovery.
Founded in 1909, UMBS supports long-term research and education through immersive, field-based courses and features state-of-the-art equipment and facilities for data collection and analysis to help any field researcher be productive. It is where students and scientists from across the globe live and work as a community to learn from the place.
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