Landscape Linkages and Biodiversity

J. Michael Scott is Professor at the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources at the University of Idaho and a Research Scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey. Scott is a leader of the Idaho Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.  His research interests are focused on distribution abundance and limiting factors of Hawaiian Birds, limiting factors on Endangered Species, reserve identification, selection, and design in North America, use of translocation as a tool for establishing or augmenting animal populations, predicting wildlife species distribution issues of scale and accuracy, and estimating bird abundance. Scott is widely published on these and other related topics. 

Michael Soulé is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz. A founder and first president of the Society for Conservation Biology and The Wildlands Network, Dr. Soulé  has written and edited nine books on biology, conservation biology, and the social and policy context of conservation and has published more than 170 papers in journals. Soulé is a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his many honors, Dr. Soulé is the sixth recipient of the Archie Carr Medal and in the first class of recipients of The Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Pioneer Award.

Donald M. Waller is professor of botany and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Reed Noss is the Davis-Shine Endowed Professor at the University of Florida. Noss is focused 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. Noss has helped to pioneer methods of integrating population viability analysis into reserve selection algorithms. He currently focuses 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.