dg.o 2007

Global Climate Change Keynote Panelist

Dominique Bachelet, Director, Climate Change Science Team, The Nature Conservancy

Dr. Dominique Bachelet is currently Director of the Climate Change Science Team for the Nature Conservancy (TNC).  She holds a Ph.D. in Botany and Plant Pathology from Colorado State University.  Her research focus is modeling ecological systems, including interactions between plant and animals in terms of carbon, water and nutrient cycling in the shortgrass prairie; nitrogen fixation and carbon and nitrogen budget in desert ecosystems; UV-B impacts; climate change impacts on paddy rice ecosystems in Asia; and climate change impacts on global terrestrial systems.  One of her current projects at TNC, in collaboration with the National Geographic geoportal, involves providing various climate change scenarios and sea level rise scenarios to TNC field managers and land buyers, so that the land stewards can anticipate how future climate changes might impact their particular location. 

For the last 10 years Dr. Bachelet has been working with the MAPSS team on a USFS grant to create dynamic global vegetation models. This effort has generated world maps of vegetation distribution, carbon stocks and fire impacts for every year between 1901 and 2100. The team is currently using TNC funding to develop higher resolution simulations for North America under the latest climate and CO2 scenarios. With Jim Lenihan and Ron Neilson, Dominique has been exploring the impacts of wildfire and fire suppression on ecosystem response under various climate change scenarios. The MAPSS team has been involved in higher resolution projects for various regions of the US, especially California. The research team continually faces challenges with the scientific, user interface, and information integration issues involved in delivering information to land stewards.