Dr. Meiyin Wu, Director of Passaic River Institute and Associate Professor in the Department of Biology and Molecular Biology, is an ecologist whose research focuses on habitat restoration and ecosystem management. Her research program emphasizes on species invasion, wetland ecology and management, and ecological restoration. She has recently been awarded a grant from the NSF to study greenhouse gas emissions (CH4 and N2O) from tidal wetlands in the NJ Meadowlands as well as an award from the US EPA Great Lakes Restoration Initiative on research and development of a treatment device to eliminate invasive organisms in the ship ballast water. Dr. Wu is also the project director of the NSF funded Research Experience for Undergraduates Program (REU) on Multidisciplinary Environmental Research located at the NJ School of Conservation.

She recently completed two wetland program development projects funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for wetlands in the Ausable River and Boquet River watersheds in Upstate New York. She has also had funding in support of her research from the Sea Grant, New Jersey Department of Environmental Conservation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the past. She has published over 20 articles and books, as well as has recently been awarded a U.S. patent and has another patent application pending.

For more information on her research, please visit http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~wum

Her research interests focus on habitat restoration and ecosystem management such as the movements and impacts of pollutants, particularly on the ecological, economic and management implications of sediment/water/biota interactions and exotic species invasion. Species introduction is a global environmental problem associated with increasing human activity, which causes significant global ecological and economic consequences. Being dominant primary producers, invasive plants could affect the abundance and composition of native producers, consumers and decomposers as well as ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling and energy fluxes.
Her research interests extend to the impacts of global climate changes on distribution and competition of invasive species. Scientific evidence suggests that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are having a discernible effect on the global climate, including acceleration on global temperature and sea-level rise. Invasive species, insects and pathogens may increase its competitive ability, expand its distribution ranges and move northward. Coastal wetlands could experience substantial losses given sea-level rise. Many terrestrial ecosystems today might become wetlands in the future. Invasive species may outcompete native species and occupy the newly developed wetlands.