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Recent Accomplishments April, 2005: Davis-Shine Endowed Professor Reed Noss received a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the amount of $615,594. Research Interests The focus of Dr. Noss’s research program for the last two decades has been on systematic conservation planning at regional to continental scales. He has designed and directed such studies in Florida, the Pacific Northwest, California, the Rocky Mountains, and several regions of Canada, and has been an advisor to similar projects throughout North America and parts of Latin America and Europe. This work seeks to identify areas requiring protection from development and to devise management policies, approaches, and techniques that will maintain the biodiversity and ecological values of these areas and entire landscapes over time. Such planning focuses on several levels of biological organization, depending on available data, and includes field research and population modeling of imperiled taxa and other focal species. Predictions from ecological theory and population models can be used to test the ability of alternative reserve designs and management practices to maintain populations of focal species over time. Through an iterative process of testing maps against data and predictions from models, preliminary designs can be refined into scientifically defensible networks. Dr. Noss and his students have pioneered methods of integrating population viability analysis into reserve selection algorithms. His current research program is increasingly interdisciplinary and includes work on fire ecology, forest and grassland restoration and management, the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow and its dry prairie habitat, Florida Scrub-Jays, and the Florida Panther. An emerging theme is the responses of species (especially vertebrates) and ecological processes to environmental conditions along urban-wildland gradients. Road ecology (e.g., responses of wildlife to roads and the design of wildlife crossings and barriers to minimize impacts) and movement ecology (e.g., corridors and connectivity) figure prominently in this research theme. Selected Publications* Noss, R.F., J.F. Franklin, W.L. Baker, T. Schoennagel, and P.B. Moyle. 2006. Managing fire-prone forests in the western United States. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 4:481-487. * These publications are available through the SPICE Lab | |
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