I'm inspired by a spirit of exploration in all facets of my life. I've always been the type of person that wants to understand how things work, and it's so cool to come into an environment every day where I can find something new that I don't understand, learn about it, and experience it. Even though a lot of science is computers and statistics and math, you get to design so much of what you explore and it's such a creative process. People don't often think of it that way, but I think it’s one of the more creative things you can do. I really appreciate that part of it.

Does hope have a place in the scientific process?

In an ecological context I think it's difficult to be hopeful. It's difficult to think of this system in a way that's not like, ‘everything is just getting worse’. But the ForestGEO network is really integrated in a way that brings me a lot of hope about how scientists are willing to work together. Researchers often want ownership over their own data. They don’t want to talk about it with each other. But that's the opposite of what's happening [at ForestGEO], where so many people are coming together for a common good. That gives me a lot of hope, even though I might not have a lot of hope about climate change.

Charlotte also draws lots of motivation from the positive energy of her team members.

We have a lot of moments as a crew where we have a good time together and there are a lot of jokes. I think there's an understanding when you work in a more physical field like this one where you have to maintain a good community energy to keep everybody going. This is a crew where there's a great common understanding of that. We treat each other with good respect as scientists, but also with good friendly energy.