| Joanna Grand, NSF Post Doctoral Fellow in Biological Informatics
Ph.D. University of Massachusetts Organismic and Evolutionary Biology May 2004
Master of Environmental Studies, Yale University Conservation Biology Science May 1995
B.A. Vassar College Psychology May 1990
The goal of Joanna's research is to predict the consequences of using reserve selection algorithms to select nature reserves when only poor biological data are available. Reserve selection algorithms represent a significant improvement over ad-hoc reserve selection methods; however, they are extremely data-intensive. Many regions most in need of conservation effort lack the economic resources necessary to obtain the extensive data these algorithms require. In collaboration with Dr. Maile C. Neel (University of Maryland) and Dr. Taylor Ricketts (World Wildlife Fund) she will evaluate the effects of poor data on species representation in reserves by subsampling well-known species distributions to reflect realistic sampling in data-poor areas.
Her previous research includes demographic modeling to predict the effects of a combination of conservation strategies on threatened loggerhead sea turtle populations; multi-scaled variance partitioning of species-environment relationships in threatened bird and moth communities; using landscape associations to predict the distribution of bird and moth rarity hotspots in a pine barrens community to inform conservation priority setting; and comparing fine and coarse-filter conservation prioritization methods.
Curriculum Vitae 
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