Natural Resource Management

The Arctic cryosphere is collapsing, posing overlapping environmental risks. In particular, thawing permafrost threatens to release biological, chemical and radioactive materials that have been sequestered for tens to hundreds of thousands of years. As these constituents re-enter the environment, they have the potential to disrupt ecosystem function, reduce the populations of unique Arctic wildlife and endanger human health.

Evidence of plant disease range expansions due to climate change has remained elusive. Switzer Fellow Joan Dudney combined causal inference with stable isotope analysis in a new study that shows climate change and drought contributed to a nonlinear disease range shift into higher elevations.

Switzer Fellow Nick Jensen and Patrick Foy published an op-ed in CalMatters in support of legislation to protect native California succulents from poaching. The bill was signed into law in September, 2021.

Seeing animals and birds is one of the main draws of spending time in nature. But as researchers who study conservation, wildlife and human impacts on wild places, we believe it’s important to know that you can have major effects on wildlife just by being nearby.

"The report unequivocally concludes that land- and ocean-based actions that capture carbon must be in addition to, and not in lieu of, ambitious reductions of emissions from fossil fuels," said Doreen Stabinsky.