Kevan Minick, Ph.D.

Senior Research Scientist
Location: Cary, NC

Background

Dr. Kevan Minick joined the NCASI Eastern Sustainable Forestry Team in April 2025 as a Senior Research Scientist. His research has focused primarily on forest management impacts on carbon, nutrient, and water cycles at various spatial scales. He has worked in a wide range of managed forests, including intensively managed southern pine forests, hardwood forests in mountainous regions of the eastern US, and coastal forested wetlands. Previous work has addressed questions related to sustainable biomass and bioenergy production from forests, forest management impacts on ecosystem carbon storage and fluxes, the influence of plant-microbial feedbacks on carbon and nutrient cycling, and coastal wetland management and transition effects on forest health and carbon cycling. Before joining NCASI, Dr. Minick was a Research Scientist at Duke University where he worked on a range of topics related to tree water use and transport in different tree species, stream chemistry in managed watersheds at the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, and carbon storage and fluxes in natural and managed coastal forested wetlands. Throughout his career, Dr. Minick has enjoyed working closely with government agencies, forest industry partners, and university scientist.

Qualifications

  • Ph.D., Forestry, Virginia Tech
  • M.S. Soil Science, Miami University
  • B.S., Ecology and Environmental Biology, Appalachian State University

Research capabilities and/or focus areas

  • Forest Carbon Management
  • Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Managed Forests
  • Forest Soil Biogeochemistry
  • Forest Nutrient and Water Cycle
  • Soil Microbial Ecology

Awards and Career Highlights

  • SSSA S.A. Wilde Early Career Achievement Award
  • “Best Paper of Session” sponsored by the Forest Range and Wildland Soils division of the Soil Science Society of America
  • A.B. Massey Outstanding Ph.D. Student Award for the Virginia Tech Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation
  • Virginia Tech Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation Robert S. Burruss Fellowship
Phone: (919) 630-3307