Erika Zavaleta

As Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC-Santa Cruz, Erika Zavaleta maintains an active, diverse research group in conservation science and ecology with a focus on responses to climate, atmospheric and biodiversity change. She has published 85 articles, reports and book chapters in these areas, including 13 in Nature, Science, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and she is a member of the California Academy of Sciences. As a Ph.D. student, Erika led many of the first papers addressing ecological community and ecosystem responses to interacting climate and atmospheric changes. Erika won the Ecological Society of America Sustainability Science Award in 2007 for her work on consequences of and responses to climate and wildfire change in Alaska’s boreal forest. This year, she received two American Publishers Association’s PROSE Awards and a California Book Award for her book Ecosystems of California (2016). Erika directs the University of California’s Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program, a national effort to train the next generation of diverse conservation leaders. She serves on advisory boards for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Climate Adaptation Fund, the Center for Resilient Landscapes, and the Society for Conservation Biology. In and around Telluride, Erika studies how migratory songbirds and alpine food webs are responding to climate and other environmental changes.
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