Thank you for your interest in graduate work at the Bren School at UCSB. You
will find more information about the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science
and Management at http://www.bren.ucsb.edu
and about my students, staff, research projects and publications at
http://www.biogeog.ucsb.edu.
At the Bren School I teach graduate courses in Applied Ecology, Landscape
Ecology and Conservation Planning. Research in my lab is concerned with
large-scale patterns in and controls on the distribution of species and with
developing strategies for conserving native biodiversity. We make heavy use of
digital remote sensing, GIS, and spatial analytical methods to conduct this
research.
For the next several years I anticipate pursuing the following lines of
research in my lab:
1) Bringing conservation science and geographical analysis to regional and local
land use planning.
Land use planning to conserve and manage scarce natural resources is an ever
more important but contentious process. Bringing better knowledge about the
distribution and ecology of species and ecosystems into this process is
essential and especially challenging for agroecosystems. The Biogeography lab is
currently in year 3 of a 3-year USDA-funded project concerned with conservation planning for
farmlands and ranchlands.
Between now and 2050, the population of the United States likely will grow by
120 million people according to the middle-series projections published by the
U.S. Census Bureau. In many ways, knowing where and how future urban growth will
occur may be more important than simply knowing how many more people will seek
to live in or near the nation's metropolitan areas. We are collaborating with
John Landis (U. Pennsylvania) to build a comprehensive national spatial database
for measuring the extent, patterns, and environmental and resource impacts of
metropolitan population growth in America. We will use that database to
statistically identify key and common factors that influence metropolitan growth
across all continental U.S. regions and metropolitan areas, build a series of
GIS-based models for projecting and simulating alternative future patterns and
densities of U.S. population growth; and explore the impacts of at least three
alternative development scenarios on the natural landscape and ecology. This
2-year NSF-funded project
was initiated in early 2006.
2) Biotic response to climate change in California.
We are part of a research group collaborating with Lee Hannah (Conservation
International) to model plant species responses to climate change in California.
The overall goal of the 3-year effort, which is being funded by the California
Energy Commission, is to a create a complete hybrid modeling
package capable of simulating both species and vegetation responses to climate
and land use change, and their interaction, in multiple California vegetation
(ecosystem) types.
3) Landscape ecology of California grasslands and oak woodlands
Together with Bruce Mahall (UCSB) and Claudia Tyler (UCSB), we are conducting
long term research on the ecology and management of oak woodlands and
grasslands, including large scale grazing experiments at UCSB's Sedgwick Reserve
(http://nrs.ucop.edu/reserves/sedgwick.html).
4) Ecology and restoration of riparian and floodplain ecosystems
Funded by the CALFED Bay Delta Program, we are participating in an interdisciplinary investigation, led by Tom Dunne (Bren School), of how restructuring and rescaling of a channel and floodplain to diminished flows influences physical processes, and how the altered physical conditions affect macroinvertebrates, fish, and floodplain plants. The main focus is on how river restoration affects the abundance and distribution of salmonid and non-salmonid fishes at critical life stages, initially at the scale of a single project reach (~1.4 miles of the Merced River).
5) Adaptive Management of Phytophthora ramorum in the Big Sur ecoregion
The introduced plant pathogen Phytphthora ramorum (Sudden oak Death Syndrome) poses a significant threat to coastal western forests and is already profoundly impacting mixed evergreen forests of the Big Sur region of California. In collaboration with Dave Rizzo at UC Davis, US Forest Service ecologist Mark Borchert and Ross Meentemeyer (Sonoma State) we are evaluating the current distribution of P. ramorum in the Big Sur to gain a better understanding of the impacts of the pathogen on forest structure, community composition and dynamics and to learn what factors influence disease establishment and spread.
The lab currently includes 4 PhD students, 2 professional researchers, 1
postdoctoral research, an undergraduate assistant and a computer network
technologist.
Every student is provided with a work station and networked desktop computer.
Normally students are supported on research grants or fellowships, although
occasionally students are employed as teaching assistants in the Bren School or
the Geography Department.
I anticipate taking on 1 new student in Fall 2008, depending on the level of
my research funding. In evaluating applicants I consider educational background,
research interests, academic record and letters of reference. The Biogeography
Lab is very much a team effort and I am looking for students who are excited by
scientific research and who enjoy working in a collaborative, interdisciplinary
setting.
In general, because of the high cost of out-of-state tuition, I do not admit
foreign students unless they have some financial support. Also, I do not admit
Master's students, but do advise students and groups in the Bren School's MESM
program.
Admission to the Bren School is ultimately decided by our graduate admission
committees. I would encourage you to consult the Bren School website and to
contact the graduate coordinator
to learn more about application procedures. If possible, I would also encourage
you to visit the campus and the Biogeography Lab.
Again, thanks for your interest.
Sincerely,
Frank