MEDIA ADVISORY
For immediate release
September 6, 2007

Professor of Ecology and Founding Dean of the Nicholas School named Ecological Society of America President

Norman Christensen, Professor of Ecology at the Nicholas School for the Environment, has been named President of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), the nation's leading professional society for ecological scientists. The president's duties include setting the agenda for the Society's governing board, promoting ESA programs, generating consensus on research issues, coordinating educational outreach activities and policy workshops with other professional societies, and representing the Society before Congress and in other public forums.

Elected by the members of ESA for a one year term, Christensen presides over more than 10,000 members in the United States and internationally. The Society, considered the country's premier professional organization of ecologists, was founded in 1915 to stimulate sound ecological research.

“I look forward to working with the ESA to expand educational programs, to bolster support for ecological research, and to increase the visibility and relevance of that research among decision makers. This next year's annual meeting theme ‘Enhancing Ecological Thought by Linking Research and Education’ truly cuts across each of these goals,” said Christensen.
 
The Society works to promote, clarify and communicate the science of ecology through reports, journals, research and expert testimony to Congress.  ESA encourages members to responsibly apply their research and ecological expertise to public issues through education and public interaction.  Members conduct research relevant to challenges such as habitat alteration, natural resource management, loss of biological diversity, ecosystem management, ozone depletion and global climate change, sustainable ecological systems, ecological restoration, and biotechnology.

Says Christensen, “I am particularly committed to continuing the work already in progress to establish regional programs based on ESA's very successful national rapid response program, and to inaugurate the Society's Millennium Conference series.”

Christensen's research focuses on the effects of disturbance on populations, communities and ecosystems. On going studies include an analysis of patterns of forest development following cropland abandonment. He and his students are pursuing comparative studies of ecosystem responses to varying fire regimes across temperate North America.