research
Overview
The Jog lab primarily focuses on floristics, plant community characterization, and vegetative approaches to wetland condition assessment. We are broadly interested in vegetation-based tools to assess natural areas and understand plant diversity (taxonomic and phylogenetic) changes in response to environmental and anthropogenic factors. We have been involved with the development and application of the popular wetland assessment tool called the Floristic Quality Index (FQI).
Current Research Projects
1. Prioritizing natural areas when rare and listed plant species are lacking
Using rare-listed plant species to prioritize natural areas is appealing yet challenging precisely because of the rarity and detection difficulty. We demonstrate this challenge across a collection of sand area wetlands in an Illinois nature reserve. These wetlands lacked listed plant species or shared same number of those species, making it difficult to prioritize sites for protection and management. We derived site rankings based on taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional community information, in addition to the single measure of presence of rare-listed plants.
2. Are old sensitivity scores still valid?
Species are often assigned ecological sensitivity scores for conservation assessment applications. There is question of whether such fixed scores remain valid over time, especially under rapid environmental change and intensifying human pressures. Currently this project has undergraduate students aggregating plant conservatism values and field data from Illinois. They will compare conservatism scores from expert opinion in the 1990s to scores derived empirically from early vs. recent surveys of high-quality prairies and agricultural grasslands– if expert-assigned scores are still valid they will correlate with the recent surveys as much as the early surveys.
Sydney Hatch, Missouri Botanical Symposium, November 2025
​3. Exploring plant species’ intrinsic climate sensitivity
We are exploring spatial variation in plant species’ intrinsic climate sensitivity, testing the scores for geographic robustness and relationship to hypothesized macroecological drivers (latitude, glacial history, topographic complexity). We are also analyzing links among sensitivity, trait combinations, and regional listing status, expecting to reveal non-listed species in need of protection and functional groups of climate-sensitive species. We aim to develop a Midwest climate-sensitivity vegetation indicator for wetland resilience mapping and monitoring.
Weiqing Qu
Climate sensitivity correlations
(432 shared plant species)
4. Testing the efficacy of plant ID apps where AI data are scarce
We are exploring the performance of competing Plant ID apps and testing their relative efficacy across a data availability gradient. We are gathering data from approximately 40 counties across Illinois and using a set of common focal species to evaluate relative efficacy. This collaborative project involves undergraduate and graduate students and INHS staff botanists.
5. Taxonomic treatments
I am compiling a taxonomic treatment for the Symplocaceae (Sweetleaf family) for the New Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada, and working on a collaborative book project titled “Deciduous Trees of Illinois: A field guide to winter identification”. This book aims to break down an otherwise difficult and arduous task into a fun exercise complete with taxonomic keys, morphological descriptions, distribution maps, and diagnostic high-resolution images, of c.a.120 common and distinct species of trees in Illinois.