Ecological Society of America Announces Leadership Election Results
January 10, 2024
For Immediate Release
Contact: Alison Mize, (202) 833-8773, gro.asenull@nosila
The Ecological Society of America is pleased to announce its recent election results for four Governing Board positions and three positions for its Board of Professional Certification. Those selected by the membership to serve on the Governing Board are President-Elect for 2025 ‒ 2026 Peter M. Groffman, City University of New York; Board Member Angee N. Doerr, Oregon State University; Board Member Alex C. Moore, University of British Columbia; and Board Member Yude Pan, USDA Forest Service. Three Certified Senior Ecologists elected by the membership to serve on the Board of Professional Certification are Arvind A. R. Bhuta, USDA Forest Service, Audrey L. Mayer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Roger C. Viadero, Western Illinois University’s Institute for Environmental Studies.
Peter Groffman, City University of New York and Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Photo by David Rozenblyum.
ESA’s new president-elect for 2025, Peter M. Groffman, is a Professor at the City University of New York Advanced Science Research Center and the Earth and Environmental Sciences Program at the Graduate Center, and the Brooklyn College Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Groffman’s research focuses on climate effects on ecosystem biogeochemical processes related to carbon and nitrogen cycles. He was a Convening Lead Author for the 2013 U.S. National Climate Assessment Chapter on Ecosystems, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a lead author for the Second (Wetlands) and the Third (North America) Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“I am delighted and honored to serve on the ESA Governing Board. ESA has been my primary academic home since 1983 and it has been a great pleasure to watch as our discipline has grown and made great progress in basic science, with application to pressing societal problems,” said Groffman. “ESA has been fundamental to this progress, catalyzing the multidisciplinary interactions and facilitating diversity, equity and inclusion that are essential to this progress.”
Groffman’s participation in ESA includes service as Chair of the ESA Soil Ecology (1997 – 2000) and Biogeosciences (2010 – 2012) Sections, ESA Awards Committee (2001 – 2007), member of the Rapid Response Team (2009 – current) and Editorial Board of Ecology (1999 – 2009).
“Dr. Groffman will bring to ESA a unique and timely set of leadership skills,” said ESA President Shahid Naeem. “From microbes to global biogeochemical cycles, from urban to forest ecosystems, from soil to water, from national environmental policy to media, one would be hard pressed to find someone as broad in experience, skills, and scope as Peter. Given the Society’s broad mission to advance the science and practice of ecology to empower people to secure a thriving planet, we’re thrilled to have him join ESA’s governing board at its helm.”
ESA is also pleased to welcome three additional new Governing Board members for 2024 ‒ 2027 who share collective responsibilities in determining the strategic direction of the Society and providing oversight. These new members are Angee Doerr, Alex Moore and Yude Pan.
Angee Doerr, Oregon State University. Photo by Stephen Ward.
Angee Doerr, Board Member, is an Assistant Professor of Practice with Oregon State University and Oregon Sea Grant. She focuses on marine coastal resources, providing community outreach, education and research to advance sustainable economic growth for coastal industries. Doerr is currently a captain in the U.S. Navy Reserves with more than 21 years of Active and Reserve service. For more than a decade, she has actively engaged with ESA participating as Vice Chair/Chair/Past Chair of the Early Career Section, as a current member of the Publications Committee — including a stint as Chair of the Committee — and is a current Subject-matter Editor for Ecological Applications. Doerr’s ESA efforts include ESA Career Track planning and providing input to the new ESA Visioning project.
Alex Moore, University of British Columbia.
Alex Moore, Board Member, is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia. They are currently building a research program that emphasizes community engagement and equity in ecology and conservation. Moore conducts research focusing on the role of predator-prey interactions as well as global change stressors in coastal ecosystems and engages in practices that integrate community values and perspectives into this work. In addition to research, Moore is actively involved in championing diversity, equity, inclusion and justice in academia. At UBC, they participate in an effort to hire Black scholars through a cluster hire initiative, they co-founded the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Language Project and they are a planning committee member for the Inclusive Science Communication Symposium.
Yude Pan, USDA Forest Service. Photo by Richard Birdsey.
Yude Pan, Board Member, is a Senior Research Scientist associated with the unit of Climate, Fire and Carbon Cycle Sciences, Northern Research Station, USDA Forest Service. Her research topics are primarily focused on forest responses to multiple environmental stresses and changing climate, global forest carbon budgets and forest carbon management for climate mitigation. Pan received the Forest Service Chief’s Distinguished Science Award. She is an elected Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, was a Bullard Fellow of Harvard Forest and she most recently served as an Embassy Science Fellow at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Other current and former leadership positions include serving as an Advisory Board Member, International Tree Mortality Network of IUFRO; member of the Carbon Cycle Scientific Steering Group, United States Carbon Cycle Science Program; and member of the Global Forest Expert Panel of FAO on Biodiversity, Forest Management and REDD+. Within ESA, Pan was Chair of the Asian Section, a Council Member and served as a Subject-matter Editor for Ecosphere, Ecological Applications, and Ecological Monographs since 2010.
The Board of Professional Certification also welcomes three new members who will serve three-year terms, beginning Jan. 1, 2024, and concluding Dec. 31, 2026. ESA’s certification program aims to serve the needs of ecologists who wish to establish and validate their professional credentials, to define minimum standards of education and experience for professional ecologists, to encourage all practicing ecologists to meet such standards and to create and maintain public confidence in the advice and opinions of certified ecologists by establishing a procedure for critical peer evaluation based upon defined minimum education, experience and ethical requirements. This year’s newly elected members are Arvind Bhuta, Audrey Mayer and Roger Viadero.
Arvind Bhuta, USDA Forest Service.
Arvind Bhuta, ESA Board of Professional Certification, is a Natural Resources Specialist for the Cooperative Forestry Unit, USDA Forest Service’s State, Private and Tribal Forestry Branch. He collaborates with other colleagues to collect, analyze and present geospatial data to provide insights on changing rural forest landscapes. Prior, he worked in the Forest Service’s National Forest System Branch as an ecologist for the National Forests in Alabama and a forester (biometrician) for the National Forests in Oregon and Washington. He also continues research in a variety of different areas from dendrochronology to forest ecology to human/environment interactions and supports diversity, equity and inclusion both in the workplace, through serving on ESA’s Diversity Committee until the end of this year and with other nonprofit scientific and educational organizations such as the Society of American Forestry and the American Association of Geographers. In addition to being an ESA Certified Senior Ecologist he is also a Certified GIS Professional.
Audrey Mayer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Audrey Mayer, ESA Board of Professional Certification, is a Field Office Supervisor with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Over the course of her career, she has worked in academia as a researcher and professor (University of Cincinnati, University of Helsinki [Finland], Michigan Technological University) and as an ecologist for the federal government (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). In Mayer’s current position with the Service, she oversees regulatory and field programs including consultations for federally listed species, renewable energy projects, oil and hazardous spill response and remediation, coastal resiliency efforts and habitat restoration partnerships with state and private landowners.
Roger Viadero, Western Illinois University.
Roger Viadero, ESA Board of Professional Certification, is a Professor and Director of Western Illinois University’s Institute for Environmental Studies and Chair of the University’s interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Environmental Science. Viadero focuses on the remediation of natural aquatic systems adversely impacted by human activities. As an aquatic environmental engineer, he integrates traditional engineering analysis with principles of ecology and related sciences to develop resilient remediation approaches that work with natural processes. In addition to being an ESA Certified Senior Ecologist, he is also a Board Certified Environmental Engineering Member of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists with a specialization in site remediation. Viadero has also worked as an expert witness in state and federal jurisdictions.
The current ESA Governing Board Members are President Shahid Naeem, Columbia University, through August 2024; Immediate President-Elect Stephanie Hampton, Carnegie Institution for Science; Immediate Past-President Sharon Collinge, University of Arizona; Vice-President for Finance Jeannine Cavender-Bares, University of Minnesota, through August 2026; Secretary Emilio Bruna, University of Florida, through August 2025; Board Member Diane Pataki, Arizona State University, through August 2024; Board Member Carmen Cid, Eastern Connecticut State University, through August 2024; Board Member Jennifer Funk, University of California, Davis, through August 2024; Board Member Jay Lennon, University of Indiana, through August 2025; Board Member Kelly Ramirez, University of Texas at El-Paso, through August 2025 and Board Member James Rattling Leaf, University of Colorado Boulder, through August 2026.
ESA thanks its dedicated members who participated in the election.
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The Ecological Society of America, founded in 1915, is the world’s largest community of professional ecologists and a trusted source of ecological knowledge, committed to advancing the understanding of life on Earth. The 8,000 member Society publishes six journals and a membership bulletin and broadly shares ecological information through policy, media outreach, and education initiatives. The Society’s Annual Meeting attracts 4,000 attendees and features the most recent advances in ecological science. Visit the ESA website at https://www.esa.org.
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