Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

ESA 2012 Overall Impressions

Posted 12 Aug 2012 / 0

What was the ‘big news’ at this year’s Ecological Society of America meeting? Given that this meeting is composed of so many different meetings running concurrently, this just might be an impossible question to answer fairly. But for me, this year’s meeting could be summarized as the ‘year of computational ecology’. At a great variety Read More

A Major Post, Altruism, Biodiversity Loss, Conservation Biology, Cooperation, Ecological Modeling, Ecological Society of America, Ecology Education, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Group Selection, Marine Ecosystems, Multilevel Selection, Public Policy, Punishment, Resource Consumption, Social Capital, Sustainability, System Stability, Talks & Seminars, Teaching, Teaching Tools, The Sustainable Use of Fisheries

ESA 2012 Symposium #23, Commodifying Nature: The Scientific Basis for Ecosystem Service Valuation in Environmental Decision Making

Posted 10 Aug 2012 / 0

Friday morning is a tough spot at an ESA meeting. It is the last day of a six-day conference, and there are only morning events, so many people evacuate before this final session. And for those who do drag themselves out of bed for sessions beginning at 8 am (perhaps, like me, for the sixth Read More

A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Biomes, Climate Change, Conferences, Conservation Biology, Ecological Society of America, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Freshwater Ecosystems, Habitat Destruction, Interdisciplinarity, Invasive Species, Pollution, Talks & Seminars, Temperate Rainforest, Traditional Ecological Knowledge

ESA 2012 Thursday afternoon talks

Posted 10 Aug 2012 / 0

I spent Thursday afternoon once again hustling from one talk to another, with Organized Oral Session #47 (Universal Senescence? New Theories and Experimental Approaches Across the Tree of Life) being my primary focus. The writings of George C. Williams and his ingenious antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis explaining aging have always fascinated me. Like a lot of Read More

A Major Post, Behavior, Conferences, Ecological Modeling, Ecological Society of America, Ecosystem Services, Freshwater Ecosystems, Individual-based Models, Parasitism, Phenotypic Plasticity, Ponds & Lakes, Predation, Senescence, Spatially Explicit Modeling, Sustainable Agriculture, Talks & Seminars, Tropical Forest

ESA 2012 Workshop #8, Getting off the Ground with Individual-Based Modeling: A Primer for Instructors and Researchers

Posted 05 Aug 2012 / 0

I got off to a running start at this year’s Ecological Society of America (ESA) annual meeting with a workshop orchestrated by Steven Railsback and Volker Grimm. Entitled “Getting off the Ground with Individual-Based Modeling: A Primer for Instructors and Researchers“, the workshop was a practical introduction to the material provided in their new textbook Agent-Based Read More

A Major Post, Conferences, Ecological Modeling, Ecological Society of America, Individual-based Models, Spatially Explicit Modeling, Talks & Seminars

The many ecotones of the Columbia Gorge

Posted 04 Aug 2012 / 0

Before heading over to spend six twelve-hour days in the Oregon Convention Center, I had the good fortune to go on a backpacking trip along the Eagle Creek, Pacific Crest, and Ruckel Creek trails in the Mount Hood Wilderness Area. Although I am far from being an expert in the nuances of biomes (and certainly Read More

A Major Post, Temperate Rainforest

Preview of the 2012 Ecological Society of America annual meeting in Portland, Oregon

Posted 02 Aug 2012 / 0

I am off to another Ecological Society of America (ESA) meeting, my sixth and the society’s ninety-seventh. As I already covered in a previous post, I will be presenting a poster entitled “The Evolution of Sustainable Use, a flash-based classroom tool for teaching population biology and sustainable resource management” during the Tuesday afternoon poster session. Read More

A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Behavior, Conferences, Cooperation, Ecological Modeling, Ecological Society of America, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Interactions, Sustainability, Talks & Seminars, Teaching

Great NPR piece on NYC taxis highlights the importance of testing assumptions with modeling

Posted 01 Aug 2012 / 0

NPR Planet Money “Does New York City Need More Taxis?“

A Minor Post, Sustainable Transportation