292: John Harte | Ecology, Climate Change, Biodiversity, And Complex Systems At The Harte Lab

Hello to all of you, and welcome to episode 292 of the show, with Professor John Harte of The Harte Lab at UC Berkeley. Focusing on biodiversity, climate change, complex systems, ecology, and policy analysis, Professor Harte and his lab members tackle a range of issues.

Professor Harte is an ecologist and Professor of the Graduate School in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California at Berkeley. “Harte received his B.A. from Harvard University in 1961 and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Wisconsin in 1965. He was an Assistant Professor of Physics at Yale University from 1968-1973. During his time at Yale, he transitioned into the study of theoretical ecology, and joined the UC Berkeley faculty as an ecologist in the Energy and Resources Group in 1973.”

“His work spans a range of scales, from plot to landscape to global, and utilizes field manipulation experiments, the study of patterns in nature, and mathematical modeling. Two specific goals are to understand the nature and causes of patterns in the distribution and abundance of species and to understand the extent to which ecosystem responses to climate change may result in feedbacks to climate that can either ameliorate or exacerbate global warming. An overarching goal of his research is to understand the interdependence of human well-being and the health of ecosystems.”