Sarah Skikne

Sarah's research focuses on strategies to promote species persistence and ecosystem integrity in the face of climate change. Recent projects have focused on the feasibility of assisted migration and climate refugia strategies, including the fundamental science underlying the potential for topography to buffer species from climate change using data on millions of U.S. trees. She also recently led a technical assessment of the Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center’s Strategic Science Agenda. She has published on assisted migration, gaps in the US conservation community’s proposed responses to climate change, and how climate adaptation recommendations in the peer-reviewed literature have evolved over time. Collaborators include the Wildlife Conservation Society, US National Park Service, US Forest Service, and US Geological Survey. 

After graduating with her Ph.D. in Environmental Studies at University of California Santa Cruz, she worked as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California Berkeley and as a TNC NatureNet Fellow at the University of Minnesota. Prior to her work on climate adaptation, she conducted research at the California Academy of Sciences and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, worked on climate mitigation at The Climate Group and The Planning and Conservation League, and taught biology at community colleges. She has a B.S. and M.S. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University, was born and raised in Kansas City, and currently lives in Santa Cruz, California.