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Biography

Erica Kirchhof

I am a Horticulture PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison working with Dr. Al Kovaleski in the Plant Resilience Lab. I am interested in understanding how the progression of dormancy and cold hardiness in temperate woody perennials relates to the timing of budbreak in the spring. In the summer of 2021, I worked with Dr. Kovaleski as a DaRin Butz Intern and learned a lot about how changes in cold hardiness throughout the winter/spring months influence spring phenology through the study of two maple species. For my PhD, I am working on collecting data related to dormancy and bud cold hardiness in several different deciduous and evergreen species throughout the eastern United States, with the overall goal of improving phenology predictions in temperate regions.