Amanda Shine, Ph.D Student

Amanda is a third-year PhD student working under Dr. Jeff Goodwin. Her research focuses on understanding the impact that grazing practices have on the ecological function (soils, water infiltration) and diversity (birds, vegetation) of Conservation Reserve Program lands in the Texas Panhandle. She is also interested in the relationship between playa lakes, biotic diversity and landscape-scale ecology in the Southern High Plains, and in better understanding how geologic and edaphic factors help shape grassland plant and animal communities.

Amanda received her M.S. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her thesis research explored the novel use of a UAV (drone) and multispectral imagery to identify dung pats and model dung deposition patterns across pastures under different types of grazing management. She also did work on the spatial and temporal dynamics of nutrient cycling within dung pats. She holds a B.A. in Biology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a B.S. in agriculture from Cameron University in Lawton, OK.

In her non-academic life, Amanda and her husband raise sheep, goats and livestock guardian dogs, and are constantly experimenting with the use of creative, multi-species grazing and chainsaws to make their land a more diverse and productive piece of Texas ground. When she’s not being a student, researcher, mom, wife or farmer, Amanda reads voraciously, drinks a lot of coffee and enjoys working with wool and watching her animals eat grass.

Posters