Western Lands & Peoples: Perspectives on the American West Lecture Series, Andrew Hansen

Andrew Hansen, professor in the Department of Ecology and director of the Landscape Biodiversity Lab at Montana State University, will present "Taking the Pulse of Greater Yellowstone: Successes and Challenges in Sustaining a Wildland Ecosystem in the 21st Century" as part of the College of Letters and Science's Western Lands & Peoples: Perspectives on the American West Lecture Series. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Burton K. Wheeler Center for Public Policy.
Yellowstone is famous for being the world's first national park, one of the largest temperate wildlands, including all native species, and a role model for wildlife management. But like wildlands globally, Yellowstone is facing increasing human pressure and climate change. Andrew Hansen will discuss the concept of "greater" in the moniker Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the impact of people in the wildlands, trends in vital signs of ecological health and ways forward in the coming century.
Hansen studies the interactions between abiotic factors such as climate, soils and topography, and human land use and biodiversity. From 2011 to 2016, he served as the lead principal investigator of NASA's Landscape Climate Change Vulnerability Project. This collaboration with the National Park Service, NASA and academic scientists and managers developed decision support tools that can be used to assess the vulnerability of ecosystems and species to climate and land use change and evaluate management options. He co-authored the book Climate Change in Wildlands: Pioneering Approaches to Science and Management, which was published in 2016. He teaches "Landscape Ecology and Management" and "Macrosystems Ecology" for the Department of Ecology.