Founders Seminar Series Welcomes Dr. Joseph Bennett to present:

“Prioritizing conservation actions to help prevent extinctions”

Abstract:
The global biodiversity decline is one of the great environmental crises of the 21st century. To help alleviate this crisis, we can: 1) reduce our environmental impact, 2) dedicate more effort to mitigating our impact, and 3) ensure that our effort is as efficient as possible. Although improving efficiency may appear to be the least important of these three strategies, it may be the most tractable in the short term. In this presentation, I will discuss my research on improving efficiency in conservation. With a focus on threatened species
management, I will discuss ways of balancing competing goals within limited budgets, achieving maximum benefits from discretionary and biased spending on iconic species, and addressing the crucial question of how much monitoring information we need before making a decision to act.

Bio:
Joseph is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Department of Biology at Carleton University, and co-director of the Geomatics and Landscape Ecology Laboratory (GLEL). His research touches on a variety of themes including conservation prioritization, invasion ecology, optimal monitoring,biogeography and spatial statistics. He has a particular interest in practical questions regarding invasive species control and management to protect threatened species. He also works on theoretical questions regarding the value of monitoring information and the determinants of community assembly in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

Website: https://josephrbennett.wordpress.com/
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