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Suggested Citation:"B: Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1999. Perspectives on Biodiversity: Valuing Its Role in an Everchanging World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9589.
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B
Biographical Sketches

Diana H. Wall is the director of the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory and associate dean for research in the College of Natural Resources and professor of rangeland ecosystem sciences at Colorado State University. Her research interests span hot and cold deserts and managed agroecosystems, with emphasis on nematode biodiversity, ecology and survival in the Antarctic Dry Valleys, and biodiversity of nematodes. Her focus is on the impact of disturbance on soil invertebrate communities and ecosystem processes. Dr. Wall was president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, president of the Intersociety Consortium for Plant Protection, president of the Society of Nematologists, and president of the Sigma Xi chapter at the University of California, Riverside. She is president-elect of the Ecological Society of America. She was a member of the National Research Council Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology and chairs the National Research Council SCOPE Committee on Soil and Sediment Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Science Foundation National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis and a member of the DIVERSITAS Scientific Steering Committee.

Carl E. Bock is professor of environmental, population, and organismic biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is an ornithologist and animal ecologist with particular interest in the ecology and conservation biology of grasslands in the American West. From 1980 to 1991, he and his wife and colleague, Jane Bock, were directors of the Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch, a sanctuary of the National Audubon Society in the grasslands of southeastern Arizona. Dr. Bock is a fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union, former

Suggested Citation:"B: Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1999. Perspectives on Biodiversity: Valuing Its Role in an Everchanging World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9589.
×

president of the Council of the Cooper Ornithological Society, a 30-year member of the Ecological Society of America, and a trustee of the Colorado Nature Conservancy.

Thomas Dietz is professor of sociology and environmental science and public policy at George Mason University. He received a PhD in Ecology from the University of California, Davis in 1979 and a bachelor's degree in general studies from Kent State University in 1972. He is past president of the Society for Human Ecology, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Danforth Fellow (Class of 1972), and the 1997 recipient of the Distinguished Contribution Award by the American Sociological Association's Section on Environment, Science and Technology; he has been a Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences. He has been coeditor or coauthor of The Handbook for Environmental Planning (Wiley, 1972), The Risk Professionals (Russell Sage Foundation, 1987), Human Ecology: Crossing Boundaries (Society for Human Ecology, 1993), Environmentally Significant Consumption: Research Directions (National Academy Press, 1997), and over 60 refereed papers and book chapters. His current research interests include environmental values and valuation, human driving forces of environmental change, and cultural dynamics. He has served on the National Research Council's Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change.

Perry R. Hagenstein has been an independent consultant on natural-resources economics and policy since 1976 in Wayland, MA. He is president of the Institute for Forest Analysis, Planning, and Policy, a nonprofit research and education organization, and chairman of the Board of Trustees of the New England Natural Resources Center, a nonprofit trust that works with other organizations on interstate natural-resources issues in New England. He was research forester, Fordyce Lumber Company, Arkansas; principal economist, Northeastern Forest Experiment Station, USDA Forest Service; senior policy analyst, US Public Land Law Review Commission; research fellow, Harvard University; and executive director, New England Natural Resources Center. He has served on numerous committees and boards of the National Research Council that concern natural resources and is now a member of four such committees. He is a former president and long-time board member of American Forests, the nation's oldest national citizens conservation organization.

Anthony J. Krzysik is senior research ecologist at US Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories. He received a BS in chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University, and an MS in physical chemistry and a PhD in biology-ecology from the University of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on practical applications of quantitative and theoretical ecology to a broad range of natural-resource management problems. His current research includes statistical sam-

Suggested Citation:"B: Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1999. Perspectives on Biodiversity: Valuing Its Role in an Everchanging World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9589.
×

pling designs and field methods for quantifying biodiversity and environmental determinants on landscape and regional scales and ecological assessments and monitoring. His long-term research continues on the ecological effects of landscape-scale military training activities in the Mojave Desert and multivariate modeling of species-habitat relationships. He was the field and statistical ecologist for an international interdisciplinary team of scientists that assessed ecosystem impacts of a megaproduction urea-phosphate plant on the Black Sea in Ukraine, and he has been a peer reviewer for the Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program.

Robert T. Paine is a professor of zoology at the University of Washington. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has served on numerous National Research Council panels. Dr. Paine is also a member of the Ecological Society of America (of which he was president in 1979–1980), the American Society of Naturalists, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research is on the interactive forces organizing complex assemblages that inhabit marine rocky shores.

Stuart L. Pimm is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Dr. Pimm's major interest is in conservation biology. The problems associated with endangered and introduced species have been the subject of his long-term and continuing theoretical and empirical studies. He has spent much of his field time in Hawaii and elsewhere in the Pacific. Dr. Pimm has headed a team to return the Guam Rail to the wild; this species was exterminated from its only known range in Guam by an introduced snake. In southern Florida, he leads a project on the endangered Cape Sable Sparrow. He contends that conservation biology provides questions of the greatest challenge for ecological theory while better theories are essential tools for conserving biodiversity. In 1993, he was awarded a prestigious Pew Scholarship in Conservation and the Environment.

Walter Reid is an independent consultant on environment and development, and a visiting fellow at the World Resources Institute, a policy-research institute based in Washington, DC. Dr. Reid has conducted policy research in biodiversity conservation, climate change, energy policy, sustainable agriculture, and biotechnology. He is the author or co-author of numerous reports and articles, including Keeping Options Alive: The Scientific Basis for Conserving Biodiversity (WRI 1989), Conserving the World's Biodiversity (IUCN, WRI, Conservation Intl, WWF, and World Bank, 1990), Biodiversity Prospecting: Using Genetic Resources for Sustainable Development (WRI 1993), Frontiers of Sustainability (Island Press 1996), and Are Developing Countries Already Doing as Much as Industrialized Countries to Slow Climate Change? (Energy Policy 1997). For 6 years, Dr. Reid was vice president for program at the World Resources Institute

Suggested Citation:"B: Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1999. Perspectives on Biodiversity: Valuing Its Role in an Everchanging World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9589.
×

(WRI). Earlier, he was a senior associate in the Biological Resources Program at WRI and a Gilbert White Fellow with Resources for the Future, in Washington, DC. Dr. Reid earned a PhD in zoology with specialization in population and community ecology from the University of Washington in 1987. He received his BA in zoology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1978.

Mark Sagoff is senior research scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy in the School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland. He is the author of The Economy of the Earth (Cambridge University Press, 1988), was named a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment in 1991, and from 1994 to 1997 served as president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics. He has taught at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Wisconsin (Madison), and Cornell University.

William D. Schulze is senior fellow in the Center for the Environment, Cornell University. His professional interests and research include environmental, public, experiential, and behavioral economics. A major research area subject of his has been the development and exploration of survey methods in contingent valuation and their application to environmental policy. Related research interests include economic decision-making, especially with respect to the provision of public goods, and the effects of risk communication and assessment on valuation of environmental goods.

Dale E. Toweill is wildlife program coordinator for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game in Boise, where he has been involved in wildlife management and land-use policy decisions over the last 15 years. He received a BS and an MS in wildlife management from Oregon State University and Texas A&M University; respectively; and a PhD featuring emphasis on microeconomics and natural-resources policy from Oregon State University. He has written books and articles on wildlife management and is interested in the allocation of public resources and public lands and the resulting economic impacts on society.

Peter M. Vitousek is Clifford Morrison Professor of Population and Resource Studies in the Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University. He received a PhD in biological sciences from Dartmouth College and taught at Indiana University and the University of North Carolina before going to Stanford. His research has focused on ecosystem structure and function and on land-water and land-atmosphere interactions as they are influenced by natural processes and human activities. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Suggested Citation:"B: Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1999. Perspectives on Biodiversity: Valuing Its Role in an Everchanging World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9589.
×

David B. Wake is Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California at Berkeley, where he is also Curator of Herpetology and Director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has served on the Board on Biology and panels of the National Research Council. As an evolutionary biologist and systematist he is concerned with the description and preservation of biodiversity, and has been especially active in Middle America, where he has focused on salamanders. In recent years he has led efforts to document and gain an understanding of factors involved in the decline and disappearance of amphibians in many parts of the world. He is a former President of the Society for the Study of Evolution, the American Society of Naturalists, and the American Society of Zoologists.

Suggested Citation:"B: Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1999. Perspectives on Biodiversity: Valuing Its Role in an Everchanging World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9589.
×
Page 147
Suggested Citation:"B: Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1999. Perspectives on Biodiversity: Valuing Its Role in an Everchanging World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9589.
×
Page 148
Suggested Citation:"B: Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1999. Perspectives on Biodiversity: Valuing Its Role in an Everchanging World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9589.
×
Page 149
Suggested Citation:"B: Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1999. Perspectives on Biodiversity: Valuing Its Role in an Everchanging World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9589.
×
Page 150
Suggested Citation:"B: Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1999. Perspectives on Biodiversity: Valuing Its Role in an Everchanging World. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9589.
×
Page 151
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Resource-management decisions, especially in the area of protecting and maintaining biodiversity, are usually incremental, limited in time by the ability to forecast conditions and human needs, and the result of tradeoffs between conservation and other management goals. The individual decisions may not have a major effect but can have a cumulative major effect.

Perspectives on Biodiversity reviews current understanding of the value of biodiversity and the methods that are useful in assessing that value in particular circumstances. It recommends and details a list of components—including diversity of species, genetic variability within and among species, distribution of species across the ecosystem, the aesthetic satisfaction derived from diversity, and the duty to preserve and protect biodiversity.

The book also recommends that more information about the role of biodiversity in sustaining natural resources be gathered and summarized in ways useful to managers. Acknowledging that decisions about biodiversity are necessarily qualitative and change over time because of the nonmarket nature of so many of the values, the committee recommends periodic reviews of management decisions.

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