Ken Krauss

Associate Director of Science

Joined the LUMCON staff in April of 2025. In this role he works to advance a research program on wetland plant physiological ecology and scaling while supporting the faculty and administration of LUMCON, as well as exploring new scientific opportunities for LUMCON staff. Ken spent the last 29 years as a Research Ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey focusing on wetland restoration, forested wetland eco-physiology, and sea-level rise vulnerability of coastal communities. Much of Dr. Krauss’s research has been to provide management-oriented scientific insight to Pacific island natural resource agencies, U.S. federal agencies, and the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. Ken will broaden partnerships with the State’s natural resource agencies, universities, and federal scientists while developing new scientific insights to improve wetland ecosystem health and draw further attention to their values. Dr. Krauss will continue international partnerships where they intersect the interests of coastal Louisiana, specifically where partnerships provide new insights toward restoration protocol and wetland value assessment.

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ORCID

Education · Research Interests · Current Projects · Teaching · Students· Selected Publications

EDUCATION

Ph.D., 2004, Environmental and Evolutionary Biology
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
M.S., 1997, Forestry
Louisiana State University
B.S., 1994, Biology (Wildlife Management)
University of Southwestern Louisiana

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Professor Krauss serves as the Associate Director for Research at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. He studies the role of stress physiology on forested wetland water budgets, measures and models coastal wetland energy fluxes, and investigates sea-level rise vulnerability of mangroves and tidally influenced freshwater forested wetlands. Ken has a particular interest in international science outreach, developing agency and university partnerships, and finding new ways to measure or estimate wetland processes that might normally be limited by spatial scale or funding. His current projects focus primarily in the southeastern United States, including Louisiana, but he has active projects on several Pacific islands, as well as in Asia, New Zealand, and New Caledonia.

Professor Krauss joined the LUMCON staff in 2025 to assist faculty in building coastal research programs important to Louisiana but with international significance to science advancement. While maintaining on-going partnerships, Professor Krauss plans to re-engage coastal swamp forest restoration in Louisiana and focus intently on forest eco-physiology as a way to scale to physically relevant wetland processes. Insights will be used to rate the success of swamp forest restoration projects and develop new protocol, especially as river reintroduction projects are built at different scales. Combining engineering approaches, genetic improvement, and four decades of consortium partner study of the regeneration requirements of swamp forest species will facilitate gains in ecosystem health and aerial coverage over the coming decade. Ken will also continue his research on mangrove restoration, and on the eco-physiological underpinnings of tidal and supratidal forested wetland change with sea-level rise and salinization.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Assessing mangrove ecosystem recovery through tidal hydrologic restoration
Using stand water use to estimate forested wetland canopy CO₂ exchange
Assessing the value of tidal wetlands to water conservation: local-to-global
Quantifying large unaccounted coastal wetland carbon pools on DoD installations
Determining the impacts of coastal and watershed changes on upper estuaries: causes and implications of wetland ecosystem transitions along the US Atlantic and Gulf Coasts
Carbon stock assessment, restoration planning, and monitoring of terrestrial, intertidal, and sub-tidal ecosystems for U.S. Naval Base Guam
Pacific mangrove (PacMAN) resilience to sea-level rise: Expanding surface elevation change measurement for national assessment validation

TEACHING

Changing Coastal Oceans (co-instructor)

STUDENTS

Zoe Shribman, Ph.D. Student, Tulane University, Earth & Environmental Sciences
Ms. Nina Allen, M.S. Student, Louisiana State University, School of Renewable Natural Resources (co-advised with Dr. Andy Nyman)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

PDFs are available for all of the published articles listed below. Links at the end of each article will take you directly to the article on the journal’s website. If the article is a free-access publication or if you or your library has an on-line subscription to the journal, you will be able to download and/or print the article directly from the link. If you do not have access to the PDF and would like a reprint of the article, please send me an email.

(underline indicates student author, italics indicates post-doc author)
Clicking the links will redirect you to external website

Books

Conner, W.H., Doyle, T.W., and Krauss, K.W., eds., Ecology of Tidal Freshwater Forested Wetlands of the Southeastern United States: New York, Springer, 505 p. [book]
Krauss, K.W., Zhu, Z, and Stagg, C.L., 2022, Wetland Carbon and Environmental Management: AGU Geophysical Monograph, Washington, DC, USA, 449 p. [book]

Journal Articles

Krauss, K.W., Chambers, J.L., Allen, J.A., Soileau, D.M. Jr., and DeBosier, A.S., 2000, Growth and nutrition of baldcypress families planted under varying salinity regimes in Louisiana, USA: Journal of Coastal Research, v. 16, no. 1, p. 153–163. [article]
Krauss, K.W., Cahoon, D.R., Allen, J.A., Ewel, K.C., Lynch, J.C., and Cormier, N., 2010, Surface elevation change and susceptibility of different mangrove zones to sea-level rise on Pacific high islands of Micronesia: Ecosystems, v. 13, no. 1, p. 129– [article]
Krauss, K.W. and Duberstein, J.A., 2010, Sap flow and water use of freshwater wetland trees exposed to saltwater incursion in a tidally influenced South Carolina watershed: Canadian Journal of Forest Research, v. 40, no. 3, p. 525– [article]
Krauss, K.W. and Ball, M.C., 2012, On the halophytic nature of mangroves: Trees Structure and Function, v. 27, no. 1, p. 7–11. [article]
Webb, E.L., Friess, D.A., Krauss, K.W., Cahoon, D.R., Guntenspergen, G.R., and Phelps, J., 2013, A global standard for monitoring coastal wetland vulnerability to accelerated sea-level rise: Nature Climate Change, v. 3, no. 5, p. 458–465. [article]
Krauss, K.W., McKee, K.L., and Hester, M.W., 2014, Water use characteristics of black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) communities along an ecotone with marsh at a northern geographical limit: Ecohydrology, v. 7, no. 2, p. 354–365. [article]
Krauss, K.W., McKee, K.L., Lovelock, C.E., Cahoon, D.R., Saintilan, N., Reef, R., and Chen, L., 2014, How mangrove forests adjust to rising sea level: New Phytologist, v. 202, no. 1, p. 19–34. [article]
Krauss, K.W., Duberstein, J.A., and Conner, W.H., 2015, Assessing stand water use in four coastal wetland forests using sapflow techniques: annual estimations, errors and uncertainties: Hydrological Processes, v. 29, no. 1, p. 112–127. [article]
Krauss, K.W., Barr, J.G., Engel, V., Fuentes, J.D., and Wang, H., 2015, Approximations of stand water use versus evapotranspiration from three mangrove forests in southwest Florida, USA: Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, v. 213, p. 291–303. [article]
Lovelock, C.E., Cahoon, D.R., Friess, D.A., Guntenspergen, G.R., Krauss, K.W., Reef, R., Rogers, K., Saunders, M., Sidik, F., Swales, A., Saintilan, N., Thuyen, L.X., and Triet, T., 2015, The vulnerability of Indo-Pacific mangrove forests to sea level rise: Nature, v. 526, no. 7574, p. 559–563. [article]
Krauss, K.W., Duberstein, J.A., Cormier, N., Young, H.S., and Hathaway, S.A., 2015, Proximity to encroaching coconut palm limits native forest water use and persistence on a Pacific atoll: Ecohydrology, v. 8, no. 8, p. 1514–1524. [article]
Krauss, K.W., Holm, G.O. Jr., Perez, B.C., McWhorter, D.E., Cormier, N., Moss, R.F., Johnson, D.J., Neubeuer, S.C., and Raynie, R.C., 2016, Component greenhouse gas fluxes and radiative balance from two deltaic marshes in Louisiana: pairing chamber techniques and eddy covariance: Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences, 121, 1503–1521. [article]
Stagg, C.L., Schoolmaster, D.R., Krauss, K.W., Cormier, N., and Conner, W.H., 2017, Causal mechanisms of soil organic matter decomposition: deconstructing salinity and flooding impacts in coastal wetlands: Ecology, v. 98, pp. 2003–2018. [article]
Krauss, K.W., Noe, G.B., Duberstein, J.A., Conner, W.H., Stagg, C.L., Cormier, N., Jones, M.C., Bernhardt, C.J., Lockaby, B.G., From, A.S., Doyle, T.W., Day, R. H., Ensign, S.H., Pierfelice, K.N., Hupp, C.R., Chow, A.T., and Whitbeck, J.L., 2018, The role of the upper tidal estuary in wetland blue carbon storage and flux: Global Biogeochemical Cycles, v. 32, p. 817–839. [article]
Krauss, K.W., and Osland, M.J., 2020, Tropical cyclones and the organization of mangrove forests: a review: Annals of Botany, v. 125, p. 213–234. [article]
From, A.S., Krauss, K.W., Noe, G.B., Cormier, N., Stagg, C.L., Moss, R.F., and Whitbeck, J.L., 2021, Belowground productivity and nutrient drivers vary by assessment technique and vegetation type in tidal freshwater forested wetlands transitioning to marsh: PLoS ONE, v. 16, e0253554. [article]
Saintilan, N., et al., incl. Krauss, K.W. (10^th author of 33), 2022, Constraints on the adjustment of tidal marshes to accelerating sea-level rise: Science, v. 377, p. 523–527. [article]
McDowell, N.G., Ball, M.C., Bond-Lamberty, B., Kirwan, M.L., Krauss, K.W., Megonigal, J.P., Mencuccini, M., Ward, N.D., Weintraub, M.N., and Bailey, V., 2022, Processes and mechanisms of coastal woody-plant mortality: Global Change Biology, v. 28, p. 5881–5900. [article]
Temmerman, S., Horstman, E.M., Krauss, K.W., Mullarney J.C., Pelckmans, I., and Schoutens, K., 2022, Marshes and mangroves as nature-based coastal storm buffers: Annual Review of Marine Science, v. 15, 9.1–9.24. [article]
Krauss, K.W., Whelan, K.R.T., Kennedy, J.P., Friess, D.A., Rogers, C.S., Stewart, H.H., Grimes, K.W., Trench, C.A., Ogurcak, D.E., Toline, C.A., Ball, L.C., and From, A.S., 2023, Framework for facilitating mangrove recovery after hurricanes on Caribbean islands: Restoration Ecology, v. 31, e13885. [article]
Liang, J., Krauss, K.W., Finnigan, J., Stuart-Williams, H., Farquhar, G.D., and Ball, M.C., 2023, Linking water use efficiency with water use strategy from leaves to communities: New Phytologist, v. 240, p. 1735-1742. [article]
Krauss, K.W., Noe, G.B., Duberstein, J.D., Cormier, N., From, A.S., Conner, W.H., Cahoon, D.R., and Johnson, D.J., 2024, Presence of hummock and hollow microtopography reflects shifting balances of shallow subsidence and root zone expansion along forested wetland river gradients: Estuaries and Coasts, v. 47, p. 1750-1763. [article]
Adame, M.F., Kelleway, J., Krauss, K.W., Lovelock, C.E., Adam, J.B., Trevathan-Tackett, S.M., Jeffrey, L., Ronan, M., Zann, M., Carnell., P., Iram, N., Maher, D.T., Murdiyarso, D., Sasmito, S., Tran, D.B., Dargusch, P., Kauffman, B., and Brophy, L., 2024, All tidal wetlands are blue carbon ecosystems: BioScience, v. 74, p. 253-268. [article]
Buffington, K.J., Carr, J.A., MacKenzie, R.A., Apwong, M., Krauss, K.W., Thorne, K.M., 2024, Projecting mangrove forest resilience to sea-level rise on a Pacific island: species dynamics and ecological thresholds: Estuaries and Coasts, v. 47, p. 2174-2189. [article]
Wang, H., Krauss, K.W., Dai, Z., Noe, G.B., and Trettin, C., 2024. Modeling the responses of blue carbon fluxes in Mississippi River Deltaic Plain Brackish Marshes to climate change induced hydrologic conditions: Wetlands, v. 44, 122. [article]