Dustin Pearce joined the Conservation Biology Institute in December of 2015. His background in geospatial sciences has focused on the interplay of working agricultural lands, natural lands, and renewable energy development in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Growing up in the San Joaquin Valley, his connection with agricultural and working lands initiated his interest in biology. Watching the seasonal shifts in crops and the wildlife that surrounded the valley all developed his curiosity for the natural world that still drives him today. Finding just as much comfort in plowed fields as the backcountry of the Sierra Nevada, his upbringing has helped him understand the truly complex nature of humans’ interaction with different landscapes.
Dustin holds a M.E.S.M. in Economics and Politics of the Environment from the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, and a B.S. in Conservation Biology from Arizona State University. His work with the Conservation Biology Institute is focused on stakeholder engagement and smart planning for renewable energy development throughout California.
Dustin lives and works remotely in Santa Barbara, California. He enjoys getting outside as much as possible, woodworking, metalworking, and exploring paved roads on his motorcycle.
Melanie Brown joined the Conservation Biology Institute in July of 2015. She has a B.S. in Natural Resource Management with a focus on science and research from Oregon State University (OSU), and an A.A.S. in Water Conservation from Lane Community College (LCC). Melanie is originally from Rhode Island and moved to Oregon in 2008. She has a broad interest in conservation issues including how climate change and invasive species effect land management, and how sustainability and urban ecology affect natural resources. Her background includes a diverse mix of conservation, horticulture, and marketing. As an undergraduate she conducted research alongside her mentor Dr. Dominqiue Bachelet about how Oregon and Idaho Bureau of Land Management (BLM) managers perceive the usefulness of web-based climate tools for sagebrush management. Prior to attending OSU Melanie worked for ten years in various horticulture and vegetation management positions that include assisting in silviculture field studies; a horticulture internship focused on integrated pest management (IPM); manager of marketing and merchandising for an Oregon plant nursery where she integrated native plant species into nursery stock and gave numerous workshops on incorporating wildlife, IPM and xeriscaping into home gardens; and as an entrepreneur who started and managed a landscape design company focused on the incorporation of native and non-invasive species to New England home landscapes. Other experience includes an internship in conservation marketing and development for an Oregon non-profit where she created a neighborhood conservation marketing plan and conducted grant research; an internship in zoology where she cared for a diversity of animal species including threatened and endangered species and worked on animal enrichment and habitat displays; and work with the American Burying Beetle Species Survival Plan where she cared for and tracked American Burying Beetle populations and assisted in their catch and release on Martha’s Vineyard. In her free time Melanie enjoys hiking and exploring the Northwest, photography and spending time with her two young children.
Spring is a conservation ecologist and data analyst with over 15 years of experience in research, data analysis, habitat restoration, ecological monitoring and management of conserved lands in southern California. She has participated in conservation practice as a scientist, land–manager, and consultant, interfacing with NGOs, jurisdictions and government agencies regularly in these capacities. She has been involved in a number of research programs aimed at advancing the use of science in adaptive management and monitoring plans for several Natural Community Conservation Planning or associated programs. In this capacity she trained and managed field crews, performed field work, helped develop and implement novel data analysis strategies and provided practical interpretations of statistical results for end users. Spring developed a conceptual model for the federally threatened and state endangered plant, Deinandra conjugens and facilitated the development of a conceptual model for the coastal sage scrub vegetation community with representatives from NGOs, academic institutions, local jurisdictions and state and federal agencies. She was also involved in advancing the knowledge base about the rare Hermes copper butterfly (Lycena hermes) which is now a candidate for federal listing.
Gladwin Joseph was born in a town called Nazareth in Tamil Nadu, India, but has lived in Ghana, India and the USA. He was, until recently, the Director and Professor at the School of Development, Azim Premji University (APU), Bangalore, India. Prior to that, he was a senior leader of Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), an Environmental think-tank and academic institution. He was its director for 10 years and with its founding president helped build and establish ATREE as a premier conservation and sustainability organization in India. His publications span a diverse range of topics from plant ecophysiology to conservation and livelihoods. After finishing a degree in Agriculture in India from the University of Agricultural Sciences, he completed his MS and Ph.D. at Oregon State University. He helped initiate the development of an online course on sustainability for the global south for undergraduate students at APU. He continues to advise and provide inputs on course design as a visiting faculty. In his spare time he is actively involved with the open source Indian Biodiversity portal, particularly the treesindia group which is working on a citizen science project documenting all of India’s tree species. He is also working on an easy-to-use bilingual (English-Spanish) pictorial guide to trees of Oregon. He continues to serve on Ph.D. student advisory committees as an adjunct senior fellow at ATREE. His hobbies include gardening and cooking with his kids, keeping track of global news, reading books on history, culture and religion, hiking, and fly fishing.
Katie focuses on promoting enhanced data collection, collaboration, and policy decisions for land managers and citizen science. Katie brings over a decade of experience serving in technical science positions and a proven track record of successful partnership coordination and communication; along with the collection, analysis, and visualization of many types of geospatial data and other information. Project partners have ranged from federal agencies to local Friends groups, with equally successful outcomes. Specialized training and experience has included qualitative data collection and analysis, facilitation, mediation, and community-based social marketing. Katie’s strengths include communicating technical information in an engaging and approachable way, maintaining diplomacy and poise under any circumstance, attention to detail, and successfully working with diverse people.
Nancy has been working at the Conservation Biology Institute since August 1998. She received her M.S. in Conservation Biology at the University of Minnesota in 1997 for research focusing on the threatened West Indian Whistling-duck (Dendrocygna arborea) in the Bahamas.
Her current research interests include the use of geographic information systems as a tool for conservation planning, incorporating GIS into science education, and avian conservation issues. In 2012, she completed her Ph.D. in Science Education at Oregon State University.
Allison Anderson joined Conservation Biology Institute in July, 2009 as a Conservation Data Manager. She is a GIS professional specializing in implementing GIS technologies to share and distribute conservation data to practitioners who are doing conservation work on the ground. She is also interested in the nexus of GIS and national environmental law and policy. Allison has over 10 years of progressive GIS experience, managing GIS databases and spatial data. Prior to her work with CBI, she worked with The Nature Conservancy developing a network of Conservation Data Nodes and implementing ESRIs ArcServer technology. Allison’s educational background includes a BS in Applied Biology from Georgia Tech and coursework in Natural Resources Management at Virginia Tech.
Allison currently lives in Seattle, Washington with her family where she is happy to see snow-capped mountains offset by the waters of Puget Sound. In her free time, she enjoys spending time outdoors cycling, hiking, snowshoeing and skiing, or inside cooking, baking and reading.
Gwynne lives in the San Francisco Bay Area of California and has for the past 25 years. Her life-long interest in ecology and biology brought her to the University of California at Santa Cruz for both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. As an undergraduate, Gwynne worked on projects including studies related to the sensory systems and physiology of marine mammals (Northern elephant seals, harbor seals, and California sea lions). Later in her undergraduate career, she worked with Dr. Barry Sinervo, using microsatellite DNA paternity analysis to study the behavioral ecology of side-blotched lizards. Gwynne went on to do her Master’s thesis, which assessed population genetic structure and phylogenetic relationships of populations of the endangered blunt-nosed leopard lizard – endemic to California’s San Joaquin Valley. Gwynne’s goal was to use population genetic analyses to contribute knowledge towards more effective management plans for endangered species.
Gwynne joined the Conservation Biology Institute (CBI) in July of 2010 and works remotely in California. She has worked on quite a variety of projects involving outreach, communication (using social media), research, and editing. Some of the projects Gwynne has contributed to include Data Basin, the Southern Sierra Partnership, and the Bureau of Land Management’s Rapid Ecological Assessment (Colorado Plateau and the Sonoran Desert Regions). She also manages much of the social media piece of communications for CBI. When not working, Gwynne loves hanging out with her two kids and enjoys running and taking classes in pilates, yoga, and dance.
Nik grew up in rural Eastern Washington, and took an early interest in computers and programming. He followed this passion throughout childhood and into college, attending The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA and studying software design and media. While at Evergreen, Nik found a job working on software to manage and visualize environmental data. This introduced him to the challenges of collecting, organizing, and communicating scientific data, and the roles that software and technology can play in addressing these needs.
Nik moved to Corvallis and joined the Conservation Biology Institute in June of 2010. He works as a software engineer on the Data Basin team and enjoys tackling the many challenges addressed by the project. He also tends to CBI’s growing technology needs. Outside of work, Nik pursues a variety of other software projects and enjoys the many nearby mountains, cycling, and tap dancing.
Pamela A. Frost earned a B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Maine, Machias in 1984 and a M.S. in Natural Resource Information Systems from Ohio State University (Columbus, Ohio) in 1994. While at Ohio State, she was involved in a number of Federally funded conservation GIS projects including database construction and analysis for the U.S. Forest Service as well as support work for the Northern Spotted Owl Recovery Planning Project . Pam’s Masters thesis emphasized the design and construction of an extensive conservation digital database and demonstrated how to use it in conservation planning for The Nature Conservancy on a globally imperiled ecosystem in northwestern Ohio – The Oak Openings.
Pam has had considerable experience working in the private sector. She founded and later sold a successful biological insect control company (Bionomics, Inc.) in the Adirondacks, New York, worked as a GIS analyst for The Wildlands Project in Oregon, and now serves as Secretary/Treasurer for the Conservation Biology Institute. Besides her administrative duties as an officer, Pam serves as the GIS lab supervisor. She lives with her husband Jim, sons Jonathan and Jacob, daughter Sarah, and four-legged friends in Corvallis.