Rate My Professor Elizabeth La Rue

Elizabeth La Rue is a biologist whose academic journey began at Muskegon Community College, where she earned an Associate of Applied Science in Transfer in 2008. She continued her studies at Grand Valley State University, obtaining a B.S. in Biology in 2010 and an M.S. in Biology in 2012. During her master's program, conducted at the Annis Water Resources Institute, she investigated how hybridization facilitates the rapid evolution of reduced herbicide sensitivity in the invasive aquatic plant Eurasian watermilfoil under the supervision of Dr. Ryan Thum. A West Michigan native from Muskegon, she has maintained strong ties to her alma mater, returning as the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Alumni-in-Residence in 2024, where she shared insights from her career.

La Rue completed her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences at Purdue University in 2017, focusing on Great Lakes beach plants. Following her doctorate, she held a postdoctoral position before joining the University of Texas at El Paso as Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. Her research centers on uncovering mechanisms underlying spatial patterns in plant species distributions, the structural diversity and function of ecosystems, and improving monitoring and management of nuisance and conservation-concern species across dryland and forest ecosystems using remote sensing, LiDAR point clouds, and big data. She has made significant contributions to this field, including developing the NEON-SD 30-m structural diversity product from NEON LiDAR data. Key publications include 'Structural Diversity: A Digital Revolution' (Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2023, with Songlin Fei and Brady S. Hardiman), 'NEON-SD: A 30-m Structural Diversity Product Derived from the NEON Discrete-Return LiDAR Point Cloud' (Scientific Data, 2024, with Jianmin Wang et al.), 'Gradient surface metrics of structural diversity and their linkage with ecosystem productivity across the NEON macrosystem' (Ecosphere, 2025), 'Forest structural complexity enhances productivity in two tree-diversity ecosystem function experiments' (Ecology, 2025), and 'A theoretical framework for the ecological role of three-dimensional structural diversity' (Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2023). Her work advances macrosystems ecology and open environmental science through NEON data utilization and has appeared in leading journals such as Ecosphere, Ecology, and Methods in Ecology and Evolution.