Rate My Professor Elizabeth La Rue

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.