I joined IRES in 2005 as an assistant professor and am a Canada Research Chair (tier 2). I do research in three main areas: (1) ecosystem services and biodiversity, (2) the ecological and evolutionary underpinnings of invasions and infestations, and (3) applied environmental ethics.

(1) Ecosystem services are the provision of benefits to people from their interactions with ecosystems, which are critical for sustaining and fulfilling human life. Our ignorance of these services and isolated management of human activities sector-by-sector have together degraded supporting, regulating, and cultural services and also the biodiversity upon which these services are based. I am especially interested in characterizing the cultural values associated with ecosystems that do not lend themselves to monetary valuation, as these crucial values have long been neglected in this area.

(2) Invasive species and population outbreaks of native species are two forms of biological superabundance, both of which cost society dearly and devastate ecosystems. Yet we know relatively little about how we can guard against these disruptions preemptively, bolstering the critical ecosystem service of infestation resistance. I am interested in the causes and consequences of superabundance.

(3) Applied environmental ethics is the integration of various kinds of ethics (anthropocentric, biocentric, etc.) that pertain to treatment of the environment for the purposes of aiding decision-making. I argue that ethics are given virtually no explicit attention in decision-making, and that we’re far worse off because of it.

Before UBC, I was a postdoctoral fellow with Gretchen Daily and Paul Ehrlich at the Center for Conservation Biology (CCB) at Stanford University. My research there had two major components: countryside biogeography (the study of biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes) and ecosystem services. I did my Ph.D. under Simon Levin at Princeton University, where I studied the process of diversification, and collaborated with Brian Moore. I was also a policy fellow, and did ethics research with Peter Singer.

I am also an advocate for social and environmental causes. At Princeton, I coordinated Greening Princeton, to improve the university's relationship with the environment. At Stanford, I was a senior fellow at scienceinpolicy.org, to improve the use of science in policy. I am currently a director on the board of the BC chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and a senior fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program.

Member, Biodiversity Research Centre (Sep 2005)

Associate, Zoology (Sep 2006)

Associate, Fisheries Centre (Jul 2008)

• Ecosystem services and biodiversity: How can we plan landscapes for the various benefits they yield? Landscape decision-making for multiple values.
• Superabundance: What allows biological populations to attain superabundance? The ecology, evolution, and decision making of preventing invasions and infestations.

• Applied environmental ethics: What are our responsibilities to future generations and non-human organisms, and how do we balance these with duties to existing people?

GENERAL:
BC Coastal Ecosystem Services (BCCES):
In partnership with government and non-governmental partners, I am coordinating a team of researchers at UBC to develop an integrated understanding of BC coastal ecosystems and the services they provide to help decision makers to better manage land-and seascapes. Ecosystems provide numerous benefits to humanity such as crop pollination, water purification, recreation, and flood mitigation. Unfortunately, these "ecosystem services" are often invisible to economic markets, and so left out of land-use planning and degraded by industrial activities. Through computer models we will integrate (i) scientific and social understanding of the way that humanity benefits from these services and (ii) the implications of land- and ocean-use change for these services and biodiversity. These models and analyses will enable planning exercises to benefit from understanding of ecosystems and social reliance upon them.

Invasive and Native Infestation (Superabundance):
When populations of native or introduced species expand greatly they may have devastating impacts. I will deepen our understanding of ecosystem resistance and resilience to this superabundance. First, I will integrate ecological and evolutionary theory in several models of varying scale and spatial complexity. Second, colleagues and I will test the model predictions using grassland experiments and abundance data. Finally, I will harness this understanding to evaluate resistance and resilience as ecosystem services, which may provide additional reasons to foster intact ecosystems. This research will provide crucial scientific insights and will help society manage the risks of biological infestation.

PARTICULAR POSITIONS:
 

BCCES: A group of faculty at University of British Columbia (UBC) are seeking graduate students and postdocs with an interest in coastal ecosystem services. Students will join this team whose research will involve creating a framework for considering various ecosystem services and employing that framework to perform a foundational analysis of services in British Columbia (BC), focusing on marine and connected freshwater and terrestrial systems. Since an understanding of ecosystem services involves an integrated understanding of the science of how ecosystems provide the services and the social science of how people benefit from and impact those services, we seek diverse students with backgrounds in ecology, economics, ethics, anthropology, earth sciences, geography, etc., who are keen to learn new skills and knowledge.

Students will generally enrol through the Resource Management and Environmental Studies (RMES) PhD program of the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES) at the University of British Columbia and will be advised and supervised by Kai Chan and various other professors at UBC. Other programs (e.g., Zoology; MSc and MA programs) are also possible.

- Lara Hoshizaki (MSc, RMES; cosupervised with Brian Klinkenberg)
- Veronica Lo (MSc, RMES; cosupervised with Colin Levings)

- Megan Mach (PhD, RMES; cosupervised with Colin Levings)

- Maria Espinosa (MSc, RMES)

- Edward Gregr (PhD, RMES)

- Gerald Singh (MSc, RMES; cosupervised with Chris Harley)

- Jordan Levine (PhD, RMES; cosupervised with Terre Satterfield)

- Sarah Klain (MSc, RMES)

Postdocs:

- Rebecca Martone (PhD under Fiorenza Micheli, Stanford University) 

- Jonathan Anticamara (PhD under Amanda Vincent, UBC)

Sep - Dec 2009, I will teach "RMES 500Z, Ecosystem Services from a City Perspective: Making Vancouver the World’s Greenest City", RMES 500Z. This is an advanced topics course, generally open to students who have taken RMES 500K (below), but please email me if you have considerable experience in ecosystem services or ecological sustainability research.

Sep - Dec 2009, Terre Satterfield and I will again co-teach "The Human Dimensions of Conservation: Social and Biological Justice in the Management of Protected Areas ", RMES 500F.  It was a blast in 2006 and 2007, and we're both missing it while Terre is on sabbatical.
 

Jan - May 2010, Tara Ivanochko and I will co-teach ENVR 300, "Environmental Science II. An introduction to environmental research".

Sep - Dec 2010, I will teach "Ecosystem Services: Quantifying Nature’s Bounty towards Better Environmental Decisions", RMES 500K. I'm thrilled about teaching this course for a fourth time (with revisions, as always).  Please email me to request a course syllabus.