Scientist Q&A with Dr. Sarah Turner

Scientist Q&A with Dr. Sarah Turner

Like many scientists, Research Assistant Professor Dr. Sarah Turner took a circuitous route to find her passion. We had the opportunity to sit down with her to learn more about her academic background—brimming with brilliant mentors, interesting internships and lots of challenging work—her education, fieldwork, and her future endeavors as she moves into an instructional role at Texas A&M.

Education

Turner’s academic journey began at Texas A&M University with a bachelor’s degree in wildlife and fisheries sciences, minoring in forest science. Her primary interest was in studying wildlife species and their ecology and management. Moving into her master’s program, one requirement of her program focused on avian community composition in the short grass prairie was to complete plant surveys on military installations. Here, she was able to apply the steps of plant identification in the field, completing around 500 plant transects annually with her team. While completing these surveys, she discovered her knack for walking through the logical steps of IDing plants down to family, genus, and species, and began to love the process. At the end of her master’s program, she was given the opportunity to complete a Ph.D., and, by then, her perspective had shifted from a framework of fauna to flora. 

“Okay, plants are pretty cool because they don’t fly away, they don’t walk away, and you can always go back and look at them again, and… chances are, it’ll be there next year,” Turner explains in her energetic and matter-of-fact manner.

By doing the work of a botanist, Turner eventually became a botanist who loves to sing the praises of the field. She believes it is an underrated profession of which many people are unaware, uninterested, or unwilling to do the work despite its many rewards. She began her Ph.D. program in Ecosystem Science and Management looking at vegetation dynamics and community-level change of vegetation on a military installation in 2018 while working at NRI full-time and graduated in May of 2024.

Turner has worked on vegetation surveys in many different ecosystems during her career.

Botany

While Turner wasn’t interested in studying botany originally, she always respected the field. Growing up in East Texas surrounded by vast forests, she considered herself a “tree person” and appreciated what plants could provide for wildlife. During her undergrad, she took a plant taxonomy class with Dr. Stephan Hatch that, while extremely difficult, was the most constructive class on her schedule. Once she began to understand the terminology and the process of identification, she found that botanists can always come to a satisfactory conclusion if they can describe a plant.

“That’s what I really like about botany...you can always find the answer if you try,” Turner shared, “...if you start at the basis of any animal management, you’re looking at where they’re living and what they’re eating, and that is comprised of plants. Until you understand the plants that they’re living within and consuming, you can’t understand how to manage the wildlife species. It’s a holistic understanding of the ecosystem, and so that’s what really sparked my interest to begin with.”

Valuable Influences

Dr. Hatch had an enduring influence on her career. She shared, “That class was a thorn in my side while taking it, but it gave me the tools I needed today and through my dissertation to figure out what I’m looking at.” (Plant puns come naturally to a true botanist.) Dr. Roel Lopez, the director of NRI, was also a major influencer, motivator, and mentor. He gave Turner her first non-internship field opportunity during her master’s, provided guidance through that degree and into her Ph.D., and became someone to rely on during the twists and turns her degree program took through the pandemic.

New Mexico Research

Turner conducted most of her research on the Cannon Air Force Base in Clovis, New Mexico under the leadership of Dr. Brian Pierce, the PI for many of her research projects and another influential figure in her academic career. The base holds a 70,000-acre live-fire bombing range where her team conducted a holistic biological assessment—essentially, they inventoried the entire ecosystem including birds, plants, prairie dogs, and snakes. When she started her master’s in 2015, she had no idea that nearly a decade later she would still be conducting the same annual plant surveys for her doctoral dissertation to review military training influences on the vegetation community. She has had the unique opportunity to see the ecological progression of a specific plant community over the last 10 years as she herself has evolved over time and in each new role.

Turner has worked on vegetation surveys in many different ecosystems during her career.

Evolution of work

From a student technician entering data and writing literature reviews to a Ph.D. candidate in a supervisory position executing and planning surveys and overseeing a team, Turner excelled with each new challenge. This stable foundation propelled her work forward and gave her the confidence and expertise to fully manage projects and teach classes within the Texas A&M Department of Rangeland, Wildlife, and Fisheries Management (RWFM). Teaching presented her with a new set of challenges as she navigated the classroom. “I love sharing the knowledge, but you come to the self-realization that you don’t know what you think you know until you can tell somebody else the same thing in five different ways,” Turner said.

Throughout her career, she worked primarily with military clientele who used a certain set of jargon and only interacted with her project as it was relevant to their work. In the classroom, she encounters everyone from college freshmen to veterans getting their degrees to professors observing the class—each has a different set of knowledge levels and different ways of understanding what they are being taught. It has been a rewarding, yet challenging experience for her to adapt her lessons and delivery methods when necessary to help everyone in the room learn.

Turner teaching a botany course during the 2024 West Texas Women in Conservation Retreat.

Turner shared that she loves to teach basic botany to help people appreciate plants as she does. “They’re so fundamental to all of natural resources management and conservation that to not have an understanding and appreciation of them is doing a disservice to whatever career field they’re wanting to pursue,” she said. Vegetation sampling methods are some of her favorite topics to teach and, she believes, are some of the most valuable skills to bring into any natural resources field. This spring, she is teaching Applied Concepts in Plant Biology, a required class for everyone in RWFM, and a vegetation sampling methods class. The capstone project of her sampling class requires students to write up a management plan for a wildlife species by determining what plant species and habitat attributes may improve species wellness. Turner can use her real-life botany research experiences to get her students out in the field and give them just a taste of the many places a career in botany can take them.

Highlights

One of Turner’s most memorable moments from her career at NRI was a project on Holloman AFB where she and the research team were creating artificial burrows for burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia). One of the resident owls was nesting under a sidewalk before the team lured him to an artificial burrow using mice. He established in the burrow, successfully mated, fledged a brood, and returned the next year to do it all again. Turner said she remembers this very fondly because it was a rare moment that her conservation work produced a tangible result right away. Today, the owl is something of a celebrity—visitors to the base often stop near the den to take photos and hear about his conservation success story.

Turner working with a colleague to install an artificial burrow for burrowing owls.

She also spoke fondly about completing her master’s degree while working at NRI and praised her fellow scientists for their willingness to share new opportunities. No matter what she was working on, there was always someone willing to invite her into the field to do aerial surveys, herpetology work, or policy work with the team in Washington DC. Working with a group of people who are genuine in their efforts to help and work as a functional unit allowed Turner to thrive as she navigated the world of academia and field research.

Turner’s experiences at Texas A&M and NRI speak to the importance of mentorship to young academics and the value of trying new experiences early on in one’s career. The teaching and advice provided to her by her mentors guided her through her degrees, and with a willingness to learn new things, Turner was able to discover a new niche in the field of botany and can apply those skills to improve the lives of wildlife species. Moving into the future, she is establishing herself as an instructor and will continue introducing new students to the field she loves in hopes it will grow on them too.