Juliet C. Stromberg

Juliet C. Stromberg is a plant ecologist. She is a professor emerita at Arizona State University. Her research has examined the relationship of hydrogeomorphic processes such as stream base flows and floods with attributes of riparian vegetation of the American Southwest including population dynamics, species diversity, and community structure and function.

Education Stromberg completed her B.S. in Botany in 1979 and M.S. in Botany in 1981 from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She earned her Ph.D. in Plant Ecology with Duncan Patten from Arizona State University in 1988. Additionally, she worked on the Arizona Governor's Riparian Area Advisory Committee from 1992 to 1994, on the Arizona Water Protection Fund Board from 1994 to 1996, and on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Recovery Team for the endangered Southwestern Willow Flycatcher (Empidonax trailii extimus). The key rivers she studied included the Bill Williams River, Hassayampa River, and San Pedro River in Arizona and Rush Creek in the Eastern Sierras. Together with Merritt, she classified riparian plants into guilds associated with intermittent, perennial, and ephemeral rivers, concluding that fluvial disturbances and water availability influence vegetation structure. She demonstrated how species richness of riparian vegetation is influenced by flooding and reported the influence of high-flow and low-flow characteristics of surface water on riparian vegetation. Together with Tiller and Richter, she documented how soil moisture availability and groundwater level regulate the distribution of flood plain plant species. Additionally, she carried out an assessment study focusing on the influence of groundwater withdrawals.

Stromberg described the flow regimes that benefit Fremont cottonwood (Populus fremontii) and Goodding's willow (Salix gooddingii), riparian species along Sonoran Desert rivers, and those that favor tamarisk (Tamarix). In her other book, Bringing Home the Wild: A Riparian Garden in a Southwest City, she examined an eco-friendly gardening experience in Phoenix, Arizona, using humor and lighthearted language, recognizing the animals that pollinate the plants and the fungi that recycle the organic matter. The book was reviewed by Kristen Rabe, who described the book as an "accessible" and "entertaining narrative" written with "gentle humor".

Awards and honors 2023 – George Miksch Sutton Award in Conservation Research, The Southwestern Association of Naturalists 2024 – Southwest Book of the Year, Pima County Public Library