Dr. Elisabeth Ward is a Forest Ecosystem Ecologist and the Connecticut Forest Health Program Coordinator. She works in the Department of Environmental Science and Forestry at The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station where she leads a research program focused on improving the health and ecological functioning of forests across the state. She received her B.S. in Biology from Brown University and her M.S. and Ph.D. from The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment. Her current work explores how changes in aboveground-belowground linkages caused by forest disturbances and other factors of global change mediate shifts in plant community composition, forest development, and carbon dynamics.