Brendan Ward
Conservation Biologist, GIS Analyst
Email: bcward@consbio.org See CV [ PDF ]
Brendan Ward joined the Conservation Biology Institute inDecember 2007. He has brought experiencein GIS, spatial analysis, ecological modeling, and software development to theinstitute. Brendan has a passion forharnessing computer power to advance conservation science and ecologicalresearch. He aspires to contribute tomodel and data fusion, to enable a greater degree of synthesis andcross-pollination across disciplines to fully catapult ecology into theinformation age.
Brendan is currently contributing heavily to the developmentof the Data Basin project , acutting-edge conservation data commons and analytical platform. He is tasked with locating, cataloging,processing, and uploading hundreds of conservation-relevant datasets. He has contributed to the design andfunctionality of Data Basin, and has developednumerous programs in support of the processing pipeline required to getdatasets standardized for upload to the site. Brendan has also contributed to other projects at CBI, includingestimation of fisher habitat in the Sierra Nevadaas a function of fire and fuel management, and development of additionalextensions for the landscape simulation model LANDIS-II .
Brendan earned his M.S. in Forest and Landscape Ecology at the University of Wisconsin– Madison , and his B.S. in Environmental Scienceat the Huxley Collegeof the Environment, Western Washington University . From 2004 to 2007, Brendan worked for the LANDFIRE project at the US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station –Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory . During that period, he was the technical team lead of the fire regimesmapping and modeling team, and was heavily involved with simulating historicalfire regimes for the United States and determining the degree ofecological departure between historical vegetation conditions and contemporaryvegetation. He also contributed heavilyto other critical processes within LANDFIRE , lending his expertise inprogramming and spatial analysis to develop mission critical softwareapplications still in use today.
Brendan currently lives in Corvallis, Oregonwith his wife Amy. He enjoys raising allsorts of domestic and non-invasive exotic members of the Plantae kingdom. He also enjoys woodworking, includingguitar-building and furniture-making, as well as pottery, photography,pen-and-ink drawing, and the occasional bout of recreational programming.
