Ivette Perfecto School of Natural Resources & the Environment, University of Michigan

Home , Future Evolution, Ruth DeFries

SES Distinguished Scientist Seminar Series - 2008 Peter D. Ward Professor of Biology and of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington

IS PAST GLOBAL WARMING IN DEEP TIME A CLUE TO THE NEAR FUTURE ON EARTH?

12 September -- 3:00 PM, Speck Auditorium, Rowe Building, MBL*

Peter Ward received his Ph.D. in Geology from McMaster University in 1976. His academic career has included teaching posts and professional connections with Ohio State University, the NASA Astrobiology Institute, the University of Calgary, and the California Institute of Technology. He is currently at the University of Washington, where he holds appointments in the Dept. of Biology and Earth and Space Sciences.

Dr. Ward’s primary interest is paleontology, and has served as editor of many professional journals including Co-Editor in Chief for Cretaceous Research (1984-88), Associate Editor of Paleobiology (1985-89) and Associate Editor of Geology (1991-1993). He was elected a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences in 1984. In 1986-88 and 1994-96, respectively, he was elected a Councilor and Senior Councilor to the Paleontological Society, an international nonprofit organization devoted to the advancement of the science of paleontology.

He specializes in the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event and mass extinctions generally. He has published numerous books (see reverse) and articles written for both professional and lay audiences on biodiversity, extinction and the fossil record. His 1992 book On Methuselah's Trail received a "Golden Trilobite Award" from the Paleontological Society as the best popular science book of the year. He recently edited Global Catastophies in Earth History, a volume sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and NASA, that examines the many potential catastrophes facing our planet and our species in the future, and looks at both the probability of these events happening and our chances of survival.

Dr. Ward believes that events in the past can give valuable information about the future of our planet. In his recent book, Under a Green Sky, for example, he argues that all but one of the major extinction events in history have been brought on by climate change — similar to the global warming that occurs today. On a grander scale, along with astronomer Donald Brownlee, Ward makes a case in his best-selling Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (2000), that the universe is fundamentally hostile to advanced life. While simple life might be abundant on other planets, he an Brownlee believe it is unlikely that advanced lifeforms like those found on Earth are widespread in the universe.

______*refreshments available at 2:30 PM before the seminar

SUGGESTED READINGS:

Too be announced

SOME BOOKS BY PETER D. WARD

Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future (2007)

The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of Our World by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee (2004)

Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth's Ancient Atmosphere (2006)

Gorgon: The Monsters That Ruled the Planet Before Dinosaurs and How They Died in the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History (2005)

Earth System History + Life Death of Planet Earth by Steven M. Stanley and Peter D. Ward (2005)

Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe with Donald Brownlee (2003)

Rivers in Time (2002)

Future Evolution (2001)

Time Machines: Scientific Explorations in Deep Time (1998)

The Call of Distant Mammoths (1997)

On Methuselah's Trail: Living Fossils and the Great Extinctions. (1992)

Global Catastrophes in Earth History: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Impacts, Volcanism, and Mass Mortality (Geological Society of America Speci) by Virgil L. Sharpton and Peter D. Ward (Paperback - Jul 1991)

SES Distinguished Scientist Seminar Series - 2008 Steward T.A. Pickett Institute of Ecosystems Studies, Millbrook, NY.

URBAN ECOLOGY: APPROACH AND INSIGHTS AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE BALTIMORE ECOSYSTEMS STUDY, LONG-TERM ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT.

26 September – 3:00 PM Speck Auditorium, Rowe Building, MBL*

Dr. Pickett is a plant ecologist by training. He received his received his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois in Botany in 1977, and from 1977-86 was a professor at Rutgers University, where he also served as director of the Hutcheson Memorial Forest Center, which harbors a primeval forest that is one of the last uncut mixed oak stands in the United States (average age of trees 235 yr). From 1985-present he has been at the Institute for Ecosystems Studies, beginning as a visiting scientist and rising to Distinguished Senior Scientist. His primary research focus is spatial heterogeneity in community and landscape structure and dynamics. Specific projects include research on urban ecosystems, function of landscape boundaries (e.g. forest edges, riparian zones), and plant community succession. The question motivating all these studies is, how does the spatial heterogeneity control ecosystem function and stability?

Currently, he is Project Director of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study Long-Term Ecological Research Program (BES), where he is leading the effort to bring colleagues from diverse backgrounds together to integrate physical sciences, social science, urban design, policy and ecology. Pickett notes that, “As human populations concentrate more and more in cities, both the promise of and risk to urban systems increase dramatically. I hope that an improved ecological understanding of cities can help make urban areas more attractive places, thereby reducing the pressures on wild and rural lands. I also hope this understanding improves biodiversity in cities, and helps them perform more of the ecological work needed for their support.” Pickett’s own research is on patch structure of urban systems. He and his colleague, M.L. Cadenasso, are refining a novel land cover classification that goes beyond the standard used in urban planning and ecological studies, and exploring how it can improve the ecological understanding of cities. He has written or edited seven books and approximately 180 professional papers on his work.

Dr. Pickett has received a number of awards for his work including the Botanical Society of America Centennial Award (2006), which honors outstanding service to the plant sciences, and the Columbia University Center for Environmental Research and Conservation Innovator Award (2005). He has also been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. See over for suggested readings► ______*refreshments available at 2:30 PM before the seminar

SUGGESTED READINGS

Grimm, NB., J.M Grove, S.T.A. Pickett and C.L. Redman (2000). Integrated approaches to long-term studies of urban ecological systems. Bioscience 50(7):571-584. Cadenasso, M.L., S.T.A. Pickett and J.M. Grove (2006). Integrative Approaches to Investigating Human-Natural Systems: The Baltimore Ecosystem Study. Natures, Sciences, Sociétés. 14:1-14. Pickett, S.T.A., M.L. Cadenasso, J.M. Grove, P.M. Groffman, L.E. Band, C.G. Boone, G.S. Brush, W.R. Burch, Jr., J. Hom, J.C. Jenkins, N.Law, C.H. Nilon, R.V. Pouyat, K. Szlavecz, P.S. Warren and M. A. Wilson (2008). Beyon Urban Legends: An Emerging Framework of Urban Ecology as Illustrated by the Baltimore Ecosystem Study. BioScience 58(2):139-150.

BOOKS BY STEWARD PICKETT

The Ecology of Patch Dynamics and Natural Disturbance (1985 with P.S. White) Ecological Heterogeneity (1991 with J. Kolasa) Humans as Components of Ecosystems (1993 with M.J. McDonnell) Ecological Understanding (1994, 2nd Ed. 2007, with Clive Jones and J. Kolasa) The Ecological Basis of Conservation: Heterogeneity, Ecosystems and Biodiversity (with R.S. Ostfeld, M. Shachak and G.E. Likens, 1997). Biodiversity in Drylands: Towads a Unified Framework (with M. Shachak, J.R. Gosz and A. Perevolotsky, 2005). Designing Patch Dynamics (edited by B.P. McGrath, V. Marshall, M.L. Cadenasso, J.M. Grove, R. Plunz and J. Towers, 2007). SES Distinguished Scientist Seminar Series - 2008 Ivette Perfecto School of Natural Resources & the Environment, University of Michigan.

SPECIAL ECOLOGY IN A COFFEE AGROECOSYSTEM: IMPLICATIONS FOR BIOLOGICAL CONTROL OF PESTS AND DISEASES.

24 October -- 3:00 PM, Lillie Auditorium, MBL*

Dr. Perfecto is interested in how biological diversity affects managed and natural tropical and temperate ecosystems, with emphasis on the impacts of agriculture on biodiversity. Her work is important for conservation, sustainable development, and in the political ecology of the Third World, especially Latin America. Much of her research is centered on studies of economically important coffee agroecosystems in Southern Mexico. Her work focuses on top-down processes that can reduce herbivory by vertebrate and invertebrate predators, and improve coffee yield without use of pesticides.

Her research group uses a comparative approach along an agricultural intensification gradient. Two general hypotheses guide these experiments: 1) that top down control in agroecosystems can limit herbivory, and 2) that diversity and abundance of predators (vertebrates and invertebrates) affects the degree of this limitation. As the diversity of predators is reduced along the agricultural intensification gradient, so is their ability to control herbivores, with a resultant decline in yield. Perfecto’s group is also investigating how local level multi-species interactions generate landscape level spatial pattern in the ant Azteca instabilis. Finally, in the Atlantic lowlands of Nicaragua, they are studying ecological succession and recovery after agriculture is abandoned.

Dr. Perfecto has received a number of awards for her work including a faculty Career Development Award (University of Michigan) in 2002, the Certificate of Recognition for Service to Latina/o Students, Latino Task Force in 2001, The Samuel A. Graham Award from the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Michigan in 1989 and a Special Recognition award from the Ford Foundation in 1988. She was a Fulbright Fellow in Nicaragua from 1986-1987. She is currently Coordinating Lead Author of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD, http://www.agassessment.org/) report on Latin America and the Caribbean. She has published more than 70 papers and book chapters, and written a book with John Vandermeer, A Breakfast of Biodiversity: The Political Ecology of Rain Forest Deforestation, published by the Institute for Food Development Policy, San Francisco, CA. See reverse for suggested readings ► ______*refreshments available at 2:30 PM before the seminar

SUGGESTED READINGS

Perfecto, I., R.A. Rice, R. Greenberg, and M.E. Van der Voort (1996). Shade Coffee: A Disappearing Refuge for Biodiversity. BioScience 46:598-608.

Liere, H. and I. Perfecto (2008). Cheating on Mutualism: Indirect Beneftis of Ant Attendance to a Coccidophageous Coccinellid. Environmental Entomology 37:143:149.

Perfecto, I. And J. Vandermeer (2008). Spatial pattern and ecological process in the coffee agroforestry system. Ecology 89:915-920.

Vandermeer, J., I. Perfecto, and S.M. Philpott (2008). Clusters of ant colonies and robust criticality in a tropical agroecosystem. Nature 451:457-459.

SES Distinguished Scientist Seminar Series - 2008 Ruth DeFries Columbia University, Dept. of Ecology, Evolution & Environ. Biology

LAND USE TRANSITIONS IN THE TROPICS.

31 October -- 3:00 PM, Speck Auditorium, Rowe Building, MBL*

Ruth DeFries is an environmental geographer who uses remotely sensed satellite imagery to explore the relationship between Earth’s vegetative cover, human modifi- cations of the landscape, and the biochemical processes that regulate our planet’s habitability. She received her Ph.D. (1980) from Johns Hopkins University, after which she was research scientistat the India Institute of Technology in Bombay (1980- 1983) and then senior project officer at the National Research Council (1987-1991). She then joined the faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she is professor with a joint appointment in the Dept. of Geography and the Earth System Science Center. She is currently on leave and a fellow at Columbia University in the Dept. of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology.

Dr. DeFries is interested in observing land cover and land use change at regional and global scales with remotely sensed data and exploring the implications for ecological services such as climate regulation, the carbon cycle, and biodiversity. One of the greatest uncertainties researchers face when analyzing the world’s carbon balance is the extent of tropical deforestation. At the regional level, her work initially focused on central Africa and she has moved on to map areas in Southeast Asia and the Brazilian Amazon. In the past, the deforestation rate in these areas has been cobbled together using national statistics on forest cover and coarse-resolution satellite imagery that cannot detect changes finer than the level of individual pixels. Recognizing the limitations of these strategies, DeFries and a team of collaborators developed a more precise approach to mapping land cover that views the landscape as a continuum. With this method, DeFries has compiled datasets that have significantly enhanced her and other researchers’ ability to make better projections about future climate and the ecological impacts of changing land use.

Combining expertise with sophisticated satellite-imaging systems and a deep understanding of the environmental effects of agriculture and urbanization, DeFries is providing a clearer picture of the processes transforming our planet, and she has received a number of awards for her work. In 1990 she received the National Research Council Performance Award from the Commission on Geosciences, Environment and Resources. She was an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow in 2001 and was elected to membership in the prestigious National Academy of Sciences in 2006. She was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow (see http://www.geog.umd.edu/news/Ruth_Defries_wins_MacArthur_Genius_Award.html) in 2007. See reverse for suggested readings and more ► ______*refreshments available at 2:30 PM before the seminar