Understanding plant variation.

Why this matters

Restoration and conservation decisions often rely on geography, climate similarity, or broad seed zones. Those proxies are useful, but they do not always capture the genetic variation that shapes establishment, persistence, and resilience.

Landscape genetic analyses help reveal how populations are structured, how genetic diversity is distributed, and where environmental gradients are associated with adaptive variation.

Decisions this helps answer

• Which populations are genetically distinct enough to manage separately?
• Where is adaptive variation likely to matter for restoration success?
• How should climate risk influence seed movement or conservation planning?
• What genetic patterns should be translated into maps, reports, or management units?

What we do

We integrate genome-wide data with climate, geography, and ecological context to identify patterns that matter for management. Analyses can include population structure, genetic diversity, genotype-environment association, genetic offset, and spatial prediction of adaptive variation.

GEA and adaptive variation

Genotype-environment association analyses can help identify where genetic variation is correlated with climate, soil, topography, or other environmental gradients. We treat these results as decision support rather than simple answers: useful signals are interpreted alongside population history, sampling design, ecological knowledge, and evidence from field or common garden studies.

This framing helps partners understand which environmental gradients may matter, where climate exposure could create risk, and when genetic associations should guide seed sourcing, experimental design, or additional validation.

Products we develop

• Maps of population structure, adaptive variation, or genetic risk
• Technical reports written for management application
• Decision-ready summaries for agencies, NGOs, and project partners
• GIS-compatible outputs for planning workflows
• Recommendations for next-step sampling, experiments, or implementation

When this is a fit

This research is a strong fit when a project needs to move beyond general rules of thumb and evaluate genetic variation directly. It is especially useful for large restoration programs, species with broad environmental gradients, and projects where climate exposure or maladaptation risk is a concern.