Kimberly Novick is an environmental scientist who joined O'Neill's faculty in 2012. Her work combines principles from biometeorology, plant physiology, and hydrology. Research interests include the biophysical determinants of ecosystem carbon uptake and water use, advancing biometeorological observation approaches, and exploring tradeoffs between tree growth, drought sensitivity, and resistance to insect outbreak. Recently, Novick has investigated how drought affects a range of forest processes; her research is focused on fingerprinting the biophysical mechanisms that determine ecosystem-scale carbon and water cycle fluxes.

Novick runs a dynamic lab with her students with research taking place at a range of field research sites. Their work is focused on understanding the links between climate, land management, and carbon and water cycling in eastern U.S. forests. Locations include the Morgan-Monroe Flux Tower, one of the longest running flux monitoring towers in the Ameriflux network, the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, and the Crossett Experimental Forest in southern Arkansas. More details about these project are available on her lab website.

She received her B.S.E. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Duke University in 2002, returning in 2005 for her Ph.D. Novick's doctoral work at Duke focused on measuring and interpreting long-term records of forest carbon and water cycling and was situated in the Duke Forest FACTS-1 and FACE experiments. Her post-doctoral training took place at the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, a USDA Forest Service experimental forest in western North Carolina. At Coweeta, Novick explored the role of topography in mediating ecosystem-scale fluxes of carbon dioxide and evapotranspiration. Novick's work has been published in several environmental science journals, including Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Global Change Biology, Nature Climate Change, Oecologia, and Tree Physiology.