Professor Lauenroth studies ecosystems in dry areas. His past work has focused on grasslands and his current research concentrates on questions associated with mixtures of grasses and shrubs or on ecosystems dominated by shrubs. His specific research interests include: plant population and community ecology; ecohydrology, ecosystem ecology, and the effects of projected climate change on plant communities and ecosystems. Within these general topics, he and his students have worked on demography, controls on recruitment, resource partitioning between grasses and woody plants, responses to and recovery from disturbances ranging from small to large spatial scale including grazing by domestic livestock. Another branch of his research falls within the realm of ecosystem ecology and has included above and belowground net primary production, carbon budgets, and water balance. He uses simulation modeling as a key exploratory and analysis tool across all of the organizational and spatial scales of his research. Professor Lauenroth's current research is on big sagebrush plant communities and ecosystems in western North America.