Education

B.S. Vanderbilt University
M.S. Miami University (Ohio)
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

Research Interests

• Conservation biology 
• Quantifying the basic ecology of endangered species
• Techniques for inventorying and monitoring wildlife populations
• Using a combination of empirical and theoretical approaches to assess how environmental change, such as climate change, will affect the distribution of mammal species
• Vertebrate species and how they use and partition resources in their environment, and how this affects their abundance and distribution
• Wildlife ecology, as relevant to the management of biodiversity

Advising Interests

• Conservation biology
• Environmental science
• History of biology
• Mammalogy
• Relationship between science and policy
• Vertebrate ecology
• Wildlife management

Current Research Projects

Grinnell Resurvey of the Mammals of the Lassen Region of Northern California

I am determining the current distribution of small- and medium-sized mammals along an elevational and precipitation gradient, as compared to surveys conducted by Joseph Grinnell and his colleagues in the 1920s. My study area ranges from the Sacramento River to the Nevada border and includes Lassen Volcanic National Park, Eagle Lake, and the Madeline Plains. This project is the second facet of the "Grinnell Resurvey Project" at UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

Ecology and Conservation of the Sierra Nevada Red Fox

I am working with a suite of state and federal agencies to document the distribution and basic ecology of the Sierra Nevada red fox, one of California's rarest and least-studied carnivore species. For my dissertation, I conducted a basic ecology study of the only known population, in the Lassen Peak region of northern California, and I am now using these results to develop management and research recommendations.