Species Diversity

I am a PhD student in ecology at the University of Arizona where I also work as a Research Intern in Bioinformatics and Geospatial Analysis for an iPlant Seed Project on Botanical Geospatial Diversity Cyberinfrastructure. My research broadly centers on the topics of species diversity, biogeography and macroecology; in this realm I study patterns of species diversity, species distribution modeling, and am particularly interested in the mechanisms that both enable and constrain organisms to live where they do in the context of climate change. While some of my work is continental in scale across diverse organisms, a significant component is also targeted at understanding the limits of the distribution of Sonoran desert and Mojave Desert plant species. Before pursuing academic studies in ecology I worked for resource conservation agencies and later in the geographic information systems (GIS) field as programmer, specialist and project manager. So, I also have 15+ years of experience with information systems and GIS in both local and state government, non-profit, and private industry settings. I am a Certified GIS Professional by the GIS Certification Institute and an esri Certified ArcGIS Desktop Professional.