Dominique was born and raised in northern France. She received her Master’s degree in 1978 in Lille (France) and her Ph.D. in 1983 at Colorado State University working on biogeochemical cycles in the shortgrass prairie. In 1984, after a brief 3 months in Thailand teaching a simulation modeling class, she went to U.C. Riverside as a postdoc simulating nitrogen fixing shrubs in the Sonoran desert then went two years later to New Mexico State University to simulate Chihuahuan desert ecosystem processes. She was hired in 1988 as a contractor for the US EPA in Corvallis (OR) to work on climate change impacts on paddy rice ecosystems in Asia. In 1994 she spent a year working in Toulouse (France) simulating Mediterranean ecosystems. In the Fall of 1995, she started working with a USFS team simulating climate change impacts on global terrestrial systems first out of the University of New Hampshire and then out of Corvallis where she also taught at Oregon State University (OSU) as faculty in the Biological and Ecological Engineering Department. In 2000, she moved to Olympia (WA), telecommuting for her work at OSU. In the fall of 2006, she spent 2 months as invited professor in Paris. She worked as director of the Climate Change Science Team for The Nature Conservancy from January 2007 until August 2008. She went back to OSU as associate professor, continuing her simulation work on climate change impacts. In June 2009, she joined the Conservation Biology Institute. In her free time, she bikes and kayaks, hikes, skis and paints watercolors.
Dave joined the climate change research group at CBI in 2010, to continue his work of modeling the effects of climate change on natural vegetation. He had turned to that challenge in 2001 following a long career in industry. After 5 years in the trenches as the computer guy in the U.S. Forest Service MAPSS modeling team on the Oregon State University campus, he returned to graduate school, completing a Ph.D. in Biological and Ecological Engineering in 2009. Using the static biogeography model MAPSS and the dynamic global vegetation model MC1, he has run simulations of potential vegetation and vegetation change for a number of areas, principally in the western U.S. He participated in the California Scenarios 2008 project for the California Energy Commission, in a study of Yosemite National Park for the National Park Service, and in several studies of areas in Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and New Mexico for the U.S. Forest Service. His current interests include bringing vegetation models into the Envision modeling framework developed by the BEE department at OSU.
Susan Antenen is the Conservation Biology Institute’s Sierra Nevada Project Coordinator. Susan is helping CBI coordinate its science activities in the Sierra to deliver timely and integrated information and recommendations to public lands managers.
Susan is also the Coordinator for the Southern Sierra Partnership (SSP) comprised of CBI, The Nature Conservancy, Audubon California, Sierra Business Council, and the Sequoia Riverlands Trust. The SSP works towards a vision of healthy vibrant towns surrounded by well-managed natural lands and thriving working farms and ranches.
Before joining the CBI in 2010, Susan worked for The Nature Conservancy for 19 years in a number of capacities. She started the Conservancy’s Mongolia program and grassland protected area initiative. Before that she was the Interim Director of Maui, Hawaii. In New York, she founded and directed one of the Conservancy’s first temperate coastal/estuarine ecosystem restoration programs in US. Susan is a graduate of Goddard College in Vermont.
Dr. Spencer is a wildlife conservation biologist with over 35 years of professional experience in biological research and conservation planning. He specializes in the practical application of science to resources management, design and management of nature reserves, and recovery of endangered species. He has conducted numerous studies on rare and sensitive mammals, with particular focus on forest carnivores (martens and fishers) and endangered rodents (Pacific pocket mouse and Stephens’ kangaroo rat). Dr. Spencer has prepared habitat conservation plans (HCPs), habitat management plans (HMPs), and natural community conservation plans (NCCPs) for numerous sensitive species in California, including the first NCCP plan ever permitted (Poway Subarea NCCP/HCP). He also uses ecological expertise to guide large-scale efforts to conserve ecological connectivity and wildlife movement (such as the South Coast Missing Linkages Project and the California Essential Habitat Connectivity Project) as well as to restore and sustain resilient forest conditions in the face of changing climate and wildfire regimes (such as the Sierra Nevada Forest Resilience Initiative). Because he combines ecological research with real-world conservation planning experience, Dr. Spencer is often asked to lead science advisory processes for regional conservation and recovery plans, such as the California Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta Conservation Plan. He currently leads large teams working to conserve the endangered distinct population of fishers in the Sierra Nevada and the endangered Stephens’ kangaroo rat in southern California.
Heather joined CBI in August 2003. She is a landscape ecologist/GIS specialist whose work has focused on predicting effects of land management and landscape change on vertebrates with spatially explicit habitat, population, and connectivity models. She has over 10 years of experience in applied ecological GIS analysis and modeling. Heather graduated from Middlebury College with a B.A. in environmental studies, and received master’s degrees in biology from William Paterson University and geography from Oregon State University. Her recent work at CBI has focused on the conservation of fishers, martens, and other carnivores in the Sierra Nevada.
Alexandra Syphard is a research ecologist who investigates landscape change that results from the interplay between human and natural disturbances, especially wildfire, urban development, and climate change. She uses a variety of spatial analytical and modeling methods to investigate how change has occurred in the past, how it is likely to occur in the future, and what types of ecological impacts are likely to result. She also envisions how alternate management scenarios may differentially impact the biological and social integrity of different landscapes. Alexandra works on issues related to vegetation dynamics and wildfire in Mediterranean ecosystems; fire science and ecology; effects of multiple threats to native vegetation communities; biogeography and species distribution modeling; land use / land cover change; and the influence of humans on fire regimes.
Before joining CBI in 2007, Alexandra earned her PhD in Geography from San Diego State University and the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005. Alexandra also received a BA in English from the University of Mary Washington, a Masters of Public Health at the Medical College of Virginia, and a Masters in Environmental Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. She also completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Department of Forest Ecology & Management at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Biology at San Diego State.
In her free time, Alexandra enjoys playing guitar, riding her Vespa scooter, running or practicing yoga, traveling to different countries, and drinking a good cup of coffee with her family and friends.
Brendan Ward joined the Conservation Biology Institute in December 2007 and is now a CBI associate. He has brought experience in GIS, spatial analysis, ecological modeling, and software development to the institute. Brendan has a passion for harnessing computer power to advance conservation science and ecological research. He aspires to contribute to model and data fusion, to enable a greater degree of synthesis and cross-pollination across disciplines to fully catapult ecology into the information age.
Kai Foster is a Project Manager/GIS Analyst with professional and academic experience working with diverse communities on a broad range of environmental issues. In 2008, she joined Conservation Biology Institute focusing her attention primarily on protected areas in the United States. Before joining the CBI team, Kai spent three years working with communities in Western Alaska mapping areas of cultural and ecological significance. Her interest in the relationship between people and landscapes has brought an appreciation and understanding to her current work in protected areas.
Jerre has worked with CBI for 16 years as a conservation ecologist in endangered species research and landscape-scale conservation planning and management of natural resources in the U.S., Europe, and Mexico. She is passionate about developing and orchestrating partnerships among the academic community, government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and land managers to leverage funds and information for achieving conservation goals. Throughout her career, Jerre has researched and developed priorities for conservation and funding in California and Baja California, resulting in the acquisition and management of hundreds of thousands of acres for conservation, including the 240,000-acre Tejon Ranch in the Tehachapi Mountains, Donner Summit and Martis Valley in the Sierra Nevada (>15,000 acres), >100,000 acres in San Diego County, and Bahía de San Quintín in Baja California (>5,000 acres). She is project director for the Las Californias Binational Conservation Initiative which promotes creation of a binational park along the Peninsular Ranges of California and Baja-California. She has directed conservation planning, management, and monitoring for California’s Natural Community Conservation Planning programs in southern California, developed a regional program for coordinating management and monitoring in San Diego County, and currently works with land managers and researchers to develop management and monitoring plans for these programs. She coordinated development of the population monitoring framework for the six subspecies of Island Fox on the California Channel Islands and, through a grant from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, developed a science-based regional planning framework for wind energy in the Tehachapi Mountains and southern Sierra Nevada. She serves as a science and education advisor for several land trusts. As a member of the board of Terra Peninsular, she is active in conservation in Baja California.