Emery is an evolutionary ecologist who how plants adapt and evolve in extreme and changing environments. Emery's lab uses field experiments, genetic analyses, functional trait measurements, and comparative methods, to understand the genetic, environmental, and developmental mechanisms that determine how organisms cope with environmental stress, respond to fluctuating conditions, and interact with their surrounding ecological community. She has studied plant populations and species from a variety of different ecosystems, including vernal pool wetlands, alpine tundra, subalpine meadows, serpentine grasslands, salt marshes, and deciduous woodlands. She is currently the PI of the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research program, through which she is studying the ecological and evolutionary drivers of plant responses to climatic variation in the alpine tundra flora.
