Rate My Professor Tracy Quirk

Tracy Quirk is an Associate Professor in the Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University. She holds a B.S. from the University of Vermont (1998), an M.S. from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (2005), and a Ph.D. from the University of Delaware (2009). Her research specializes in wetland ecology and restoration, encompassing plant and microbial processes, nutrient and carbon cycling, accretion dynamics, human impacts on wetland ecosystems, and organic matter linkages between coastal wetlands, rivers, estuaries, and submerged aquatic ecosystems. Directing the Wetland Plant Ecology Lab, Quirk employs field, greenhouse, and laboratory approaches to investigate how environmental drivers, geomorphology, and restoration influence plant community composition, productivity, and soil carbon accumulation. She has managed over $1 million in research funding and coordinated regional wetland monitoring programs.

Since joining LSU in 2014, initially as Assistant Professor and promoted to Associate Professor, Quirk has earned the 2024 Whitman Fellowship from the University of Chicago’s Marine Biological Laboratory to examine saltmarsh plant interactions and competition using a 50-year vegetation dataset. Her influential publications include "Vegetation dieback in the Mississippi River Delta triggered by acute drought and chronic relative sea-level rise" (Nature Communications, 2024), "Ecogeomorphic feedbacks influence elevation change across microtidal wetland settings of coastal Louisiana" (Nature Communications, 2026, co-author), "Mississippi River sediment diversions and coastal wetland sustainability: Synthesis of responses to freshwater, sediment, and nutrient inputs" (Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 2019), and "Factors influencing blue carbon accumulation across a 32-year chronosequence of created coastal marshes" (Ecosphere, 2019). She teaches courses including Plants in Coastal Environments (OCS 4308), Wetland Field Experience: Everglades, Mangroves, and Seagrasses (OCS 4006), and Applied Coastal Plant Ecology (OCS 7124). Quirk's contributions advance coastal management and restoration strategies, particularly for Louisiana's deltaic wetlands facing sea-level rise and climate stressors.