THE BREN SCHOOL OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND MANAGEMENT
at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Presents

"Assessing land-use threats to freshwater ecosystems in the western United States"

Hosted by Bren Professor Frank Davis

Abstract

In recent years, numerous ecoregional assessments have been conducted by NGOs and agencies alike to better understand the current status of biodiversity and the principal threats to the long-term conservation of biodiversity. A challenging aspect of these assessments is incorporating how ecological processes link together coarse and fine-grained patterns of resources across broad extents, and how various land use changes may threaten critical habitat. This is particularly true for freshwater ecosystems. I will present a GIS framework we have developed to conduct riparian and freshwater assessments called FLoWS (Functional Linkage of Watersheds and Streams), and will highlight analyses of impervious surface changes and flow fragmentation in the western United States.

Biography

David Theobald is a conservation scientist interested in understanding patterns of landscape change and their effects on wildlife habitat and biodiversity, especially in the Rocky Mountain west. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Geography, University of Colorado, Boulder, and his M.A. from the Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara. From 2000-2002 he was a David H. Smith Postdoctoral Fellow of The Nature Conservancy.

David has worked directly with local, state, and regional public decision-makers during a number of research projects, such as the Colorado Natural Diversity Information Source, an online source of information on wildlife, habitat, and natural communities. Currently, he is involved in a number of local, ecoregional and national assessments of land use change effects on forests, watersheds, and riparian areas for the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. EPA, the National Park Service, the Heinz Center, and the Nature Conservancy.

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