Dirac Twidwell, Jr.

Dr. Dirac Twidwell, Jr. is an associate professor in UNL’s Department of Agronomy and Horticulture. Dr. Twidwell’s research program emphasizes cross-disciplinary collaborations to determine how novel changes in disturbance regimes and land-use change the resilience and transformability of social-ecological systems. His research demonstrates that many undesirable sources of novelty in social-ecological systems, such as increasing wildfire disasters and broad-scale plant invasions, are the result of modern-day human decision-making and land management. Dr. Twidwell is currently developing projects to clarify the impacts of novelty on a diverse suite of ecosystem services–such as the conservation of endemic biodiversity and rare species, energy exploitation of terrestrial ecosystems, livestock production and the capacity to protect human life from wildfire disasters.