Maria Uriarte

María Uriarte is an ecologist who specializes in the processes that drive tropical forest dynamics, especially after extreme weather events. She is currently a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Science at Columbia University and serves as adjunct faculty in the Department of Ecology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil.[1] She conducts research primarily in Puerto Rico and Brazil and is associated with the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE) tropics[2] and ForestGeo[1] research groups.

Education and career

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Uriarte joined the Peace Corps in The Gambia, West Africa in 1989, where she worked with women's agricultural cooperatives in vegetation production improvement.[3] She earned her M.S. in Environmental Studies from Yale School of Forestry and her Ph.D. in Ecology from Cornell University.[1] She did her postdoctoral work at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, where she studied how forest recover from hurricane disturbances by developing different statistical tools.[4]

Research

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Several of Uriarte's projects have been featured in population media outlets, such as The New York Times, PBS and CNN.[5][6][7] Much of the covered work on these and other media outlets[8] surrounds the effects of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rican forest dynamics, and highlights the potential for stronger hurricanes to have adverse effects on forests and accelerate climate change.[7] Other highlighted work included projects that use Artificial Intelligence to identify tropical tree species using aerial photos collected by NASA in El Yunque National Forest, Puerto Rico.[9]

Honors and awards

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María Uriarte received the Leopold Leadership Fellowship from the Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University and a Science without Borders Fellowship from the Brazilian government.[1]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d "|". forestgeo.si.edu. 13 December 2019. Retrieved 2020-10-22.
  2. ^ "Maria Uriarte". NGEE–Tropics. Retrieved 2020-10-22.
  3. ^ White, S. L. "Maria Uriarte, Tropical Forest Ecology – The Ecological Society of America's History and Records". Retrieved 2020-10-21.
  4. ^ "Modeling Tropical Forests: An Interview with Dr. Maria Uriarte". Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Retrieved 2020-10-27.
  5. ^ Fountain, Henry (2018-03-07). "Forests Protect the Climate. A Future With More Storms Would Mean Trouble. (Published 2018)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-10-27.
  6. ^ "Hurricane Maria Devastated Puerto Rico's Forests at an Unprecedented Rate". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 2020-10-21.
  7. ^ a b Mark Tutton (25 March 2019). "Stronger hurricanes could decimate forests and accelerate climate change, warns study". CNN. Retrieved 2020-10-27.
  8. ^ "Uriarte Lab". Uriarte Lab. Retrieved 2020-10-29.
  9. ^ "Combating Climate Change with Artificial Intelligence". Columbia News. Retrieved 2020-10-26.
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