Published Pieces from Sam Davis, Ph.D.

This was a collaboration with Rob Messick, who, while not an academic officially, is a well respected naturalist and expert on the Blue Ridge mountains in and around North Carolina. Rob was gracious enough to share years and years of data, maps, and even old growth tree core records. We transformed ...

This is my full dissertation, available to anyone who wants it. Of note, there's really only two chapters that are unpublished: the introduction, which was my research proposal heavily modified; and one article that we just couldn't get published on greenhouse experiments. Everything else is in its ...

This one was fun to write, but it's landed in a weird place on the web. It's owned by Elsevier, who owns the Encyclopedia of the World's Biomes, where it was published. We contributed this chapter discussing the history and implications of bioenergy usage in the United States. Abstract As the world ...

This was a simple article we did just categorizing our observations of Pieris rapae, the cabbage white butterfly, using a native host, Alliaria petiolata, while both in invaded territory (the US). This open-access article details our observations of oviposition and larval survival in Ohio ecosystems...

Excerpt: Bioenergy is often seen as a more environmentally-friendly alternative to other forms of energy generation. But the truth is that it can actually be quite harmful to the environment. Bioenergy has a dark side: It contributes to air pollution. Original link: Dogwood Alliance Cross Posts: Ful...

Woodworking Network was gracious enough to repost our content about a new brief we had released, "A History Of Forests In The US South." This report details the rise of forest-destruction and the industrialization of our forests. While many of the facts are indeed, just context setting, the report h...

This was part two of NOLA's feature on wetland forests that came out of our ecosystem services report. Sara was such a cool reporter, and I loved the quotes she chose from our interview. Favorite Quotes Wetland forests encompass any forest that is submerged for part of the year. Louisiana has 5.2 mi...

I was so honored when we got picked up by the NOLA.com Editorial Board for our publication on Ecosystem Services in swamps. NOLA.com has huge readership, and the editorial did end up getting reposted in a few different places, too. It features quotes, stats, and information that ties our report into...

We believe in the inherent worth of forests as places for relaxation, rejuvenation, and recreation. That's part of the reason why it's so hard to stomach the lies and myths that come forth from the industrial destroyers of forests. I worked to develop a series of "mythbusting" reports that answered ...

This was the first major project that I led at Dogwood Alliance. Using research provided by Key-Log Economics, we constructed a story about the ecosystem services value of wetland forests (swamps, bottomland hardwoods, etc.). This was a powerful report and got a lot of media attention at the time of...

While not credited as an author on this project, just like the Great American Stand, I contributed heavily to the research and information gathering phases of this project. With John Talberth's assistance, I scoured the USFS / FIA database to get all of the relevant metrics for NC forests. We looked...

Although I'm not credited as an author on this report, I contributed heavily to the background research that went into this project. I also developed the plain language briefs that accompanied the later releases of the Great American Stand. It was also my first big project with Bill Moomaw, who is a...

This second blog from Ha Do features another spin on the importance of wetland forests as an ecosystem service. This one struck a chord with audiences, as it still has pretty great search engine traction nearly three years later. Ha Do, a Vietnamese student from Duke University, was one of two remot...

This blog was written by another summer 2020 intern, Ha Do, a Vietnamese student fellow from Duke University. Ha was a really cool intern with an analytical mind. She loved wetland forests and really reflected it in her writing. While SEO was not a primary focus of 2020 articles, it still turned int...

Raksha made another outstanding blog post in the midst of the pandemic. I fed her the title, but she did everything else. You'll note that there's a bit of a mismatch between the title (climate action) and the content (pandemic reflections). Alas, it was a learning exercise for both of us. As an edi...

Raksha was a great intern to work with. She's gone on to do some amazing science things and is currently on her way to graduate school. Go Raksha! This piece was written and published in the summer of 2020. The pandemic was raging and I was just getting a deeper understanding of SEO. While the [&hel...