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The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) is pleased to welcome three sabbatical fellows to our Center this fall semester.
Dr. N. Thompson (Tom) Hobbs
Senior Research Scientist, Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University
Dr. Hobbs’ research focuses on population and community ecology of large mammals, and he seeks to gain insight about ecological processes by assimilating models with data. He is particularly interested in how scientists from various disciplines can apply Bayesian modeling to solve environmental problems, including those with a strong social component.
Dr. Hobbs returns to SESYNC following a productive visit to our Center last December, during which he completed a book on the math behind Bayesian modeling (and why it works!). This fall, he is working with SESYNC postdoc Dr. Mary Collins to prepare an upcoming short course for practicing natural and social scientists within the SESYNC community—including postdocs and those later in their career development—focused on accelerating learning of Bayesian modeling for these advanced researchers.
“Bayesian models are extremely powerful,” says Hobbs, “and they are particularly well-suited to socio-environmental problems that have multiple layers of complexity and multiple sources of uncertainty, and for which analyses need to be communicated in a clear way to people who make decisions.”
The forthcoming book, titled Bayesian Models: A Statistical Primer for Ecologists and co-authored with Dr. Mevin Hooten, is now in production with Princeton University Press and will be available in early 2015.
Dr. Hobbs can be reached by emailing: tom.hobbs@colostate.edu
Dr. J. Baird Callicott
University Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy, University of North Texas
Dr. Callicott is interested in how philosophers can make both a creative contribution to the intellectual community and a practical difference in the world. Early in his career, he was influenced by the environmental crises of the 1960’s, often contextualized by the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring; the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb; the passage of the Clean Air, Water Quality, and Wild and Scenic Rivers Acts; and the Cuyahoga River fire.
“This seemed to me like an opportunity to do philosophy like the ancient Greeks did,” says Callicott, “because the ethical relationship of humans to nature was totally unexplored territory in the Western tradition of philosophy. The fields of environmental philosophy and ethics allow us to paint with a broad brush, as opposed to the sort of micro-arguments that were typical of academic philosophers in the 20th century.”
This fall, Dr. Callicott is leading a multidisciplinary SESYNC-supported working group tasked with synthesizing the implications of using an ecosystem services approach to ecological restoration from integrated philosophical, scientific, legal, economic, and ethical perspectives. Specifically, he is interested in exploring how the intrinsic value of nature interacts with the kinds of value that we express in economic terms and monetary metrics.
“The purpose of framing what human beings derive from ecosystems in terms of ecosystem services is to be able to valuate it in economic terms,” adds Callicott. “What we’re wondering is, is that the only or the best way to value ecosystems? Or are we leaving something out that is important to human beings?”
Dr. Callicott can be reached by emailing: johnbaird.callicott@unt.edu
Dr. Matthew E. Baker
Associate Professor of Geography & Environmental Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Much of Dr. Baker’s work relates to the interaction between ecological and physical systems; recently, he has focused on developing new analytical techniques that help address various problems in applied ecology at the interface of natural sciences, policy, and management. (Examples include methods for detecting geomorphic and biotic consequences of watershed urbanization, the impact of climate change on relatively pristine National Parks, or estimating potential water-quality benefits of watershed-scale restoration of riparian buffers in Chesapeake Bay tributaries.)
This fall, Dr. Baker will explore how science can be better communicated to policy makers and managers. He notes that for many researchers, there remains a gap between published scientific results and their practical application. However, that gap can be closed when scientists take the time to understand how problems defined by the policy or management community connect with scientific questions, and plan a research agenda that matches the problem while contibuting new knowledge. Part of his time at SESYNC will be focused on how to both achieve scientific consensus for scholarly research, as well as communicate research to non-expert audiences in ways that are at the same time accessible and transformative.
Dr. Baker is also interested in how scientific evidence is used in legal processes and in developing policy. In cases such as those related to, for example, water quality degradation, “the details of the case are often fairly cut and dry for ecologists,” he says. “But this information has to be expressed clearly, logically, and persuasively to non-experts in the court without over-simplifying matters. These types of cases have implications for a much broader array of scientific- and policy-related exchanges.”
Dr. Baker can be reached by emailing: mbaker1@sesync.org
About SESYNC
The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), funded through an award to the University of Maryland from the National Science Foundation, is a research center dedicated to understanding complex problems at the intersection of human and ecological systems.
The Center awards sabbatical and research fellowships to established scholars who will be in residence at SESYNC for 2–12 months to undertake activities that will advance socio-environmental synthesis research. Additional information, including how to apply, can be found here.
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