Quantifying How Global Change Impacts Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

Virtual seminar presented by Dr. Laura Dee, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Abstract: Managing ecosystems to provide ecosystem services in the face of global change is a pressing challenge for policy and science. The consequences of global change (e.g., extreme events and species loss) for ecosystem services will depend on how different populations and species respond, as well as on how interlinked management and social systems adapt. However, most ecosystem service assessments map services based on average conditions, overlooking complex interactions between social-ecological systems and environmental disturbances. In this talk, I will outline research that aims to advance understanding of how ecosystem services are being altered by global change, and how to manage these complex systems. I will draw on examples from different systems, including 1) extreme events in boreal forests, 2) vulnerability of ecosystem services to species losses in coastal food webs, and 3) management of widespread species invasions that threaten food production and biodiversity. Together, this work contributes to our understanding of how large-scale and accelerating changes in environmental disturbances and biodiversity loss impact ecosystem services and what we can do in response.

Bio: Dr. Laura Dee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Colorado, Boulder. Sustaining both biodiversity and nature’s contribution to people (i.e., ecosystem services) is a major challenge for scientists and managers. Achieving both goals is complicated by accelerating global environmental change. In response, Laura’s research combines global change ecology, community ecology, conservation, and sustainability science and uses quantitative tools from multiple disciplines to understand how ecosystems contribute to human well-being, how global change will alter these relationships, and how to best adapt management in response.

Laura’s interests span multiple spatial scales and ecosystem types (e.g., forests, marine and coastal ecosystems); and she leverages quantitative tools from several disciplines (e.g., ecological theory, network theory, causal inference approaches from econometrics, decision science, and functional trait ecology). To tackle complex sustainability challenges, Laura leads and contributes regularly to collaborative and interdisciplinary teams that focus on synthesis science (e.g., with ecologists, sociologists, economists, applied mathematicians, computer scientists, and conservation practitioners).

Laura received her Ph.D. in Ecology, at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC Santa Barbara, focused on the impacts of temperature variability and biodiversity on global fisheries yields and the extent to which managing for ecosystem services provides an economic incentive for conservation. She completed a concurrent MA in Economics at UC Santa Barbara. Laura was a post-doctoral associate at the University of Minnesota, examining how extreme disturbances alter forest ecosystem services.

Also see more about work in the Dee lab at CU Boulder at lauraedee.com.