Erik Hamerlynck is a Plant Physiologist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS).  Dr. Hamerlynck’s research seeks to quantify the physiological mechanisms underlying plant community and ecosystem dynamics in response to variation in precipitation and soil hydrology, temperature extremes, and atmospheric CO₂ levels, with special interest in arid and semi-arid systems. 

Dr. Hamerlynck came to the Southwest Watershed Research Center in Tucson, AZ in 2007 after serving as an assistant professor of plant ecophysiology in the Department of Biological Sciences at the Newark campus of Rutgers University in New Jersey.  Dr. Hamerlynck received his Ph.D. in 1995 from Kansas State University in Manhattan KS, working on the Konza Prairie Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Station, and held a post-doctoral position from 1995-1998 at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, working at the Nevada Desert Free Atmospheric CO₂ Enrichment (FACE) Facility (NDFF) on the DOE’s Nevada Test Site.