CCI Conservation Seminar - Dr Brian Enquist

The future of plant biodiversity and the functioning of the biosphere in the Anthropocene

Can we predict the future of biodiversity and the functioning of the biosphere in the Anthropocene? As biodiversity defines the functioning of the biosphere, rapid changes in biodiversity are expected to trigger cascading impacts across ecosystems. To address these unprecedented changes, we must develop open and repeatable methodologies that integrate vast and diverse data streams—from remote sensing to biodiversity informatics.

This talk will explore how integrating remote sensing technologies with new predictive theory integrating trait-based ecological approaches can provide global monitoring tools for assessing the impacts of climate change and human land use on biodiversity and ecosystem function. Focusing on the functional component of biodiversity, particularly size and functional traits—morphological, physiological, and phenological attributes that influence survival and reproduction—offers new insights into how plants respond to environmental stressors and drive biogeochemical cycles. Through global-scale forecasting of species loss and ecosystem functioning, we can refine conservation efforts, prioritize areas at greatest risk, and improve our understanding of future biosphere dynamics. The Anthropocene presents profound challenges, but it also offers an exciting opportunity to advance biodiversity science and predict ecosystem trajectories in a changing world.

Bio

Dr. Enquist is a broadly trained ecologist and botanist whose research program investigates the origin and maintenance of biological diversity and the functioning of the biosphere. His long-term fascination in general scaling phenomena evolved into a highly productive collaboration on the origin of universal scaling laws in biology that pervade biology from the molecular genomic scale up through mitochondria and cells to whole organisms and ecosystems. This led to the development of realistic quantitative models for the structural and functional design of organisms based on underlying universal principles.  Applications of this research is used then ‘scale up’ to show how changes in climate then ramifies to influence biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. His lab also leads the BIEN (Botanical Information and Ecology Network) focused on developing a general open-source work flow to standardize and integrate botanical biodiversity and trait data. This work is building novel approaches to complex informatics problems – utilizing integrative computation, big data, and statistical tools to visualize and analyze biological data and to assess how climate change will influence the distribution of biodiversity. His lab strives to develop a more integrative, quantitative, and predictive framework for biology, community ecology, and global ecology.

He has published over 300 scientific papers. He is recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, a National Geographic Society explorer award , the Ecological Society of America’s Mercer Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and he was named one of Popular Science’s Brilliant 10 young scientists.  He has been awarded fellowships for advanced studies at (i) Charles University/ The Center for Theoretical Study in Prague, Czech Republic, (ii) the CNRS in Montpellier, France, and (iii) the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Dr. Enquist is an elected a fellow of the Ecological Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 

Dr. Enquist received his PhD (Biology) in 1998 at the University of New Mexico with J. H. Brown. After graduating Dr. Enquist was a NSF postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at UC Santa Barbara.  He is currently a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona.  He is an external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute, an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems. He is also the Co-director of the BBCS, Bridging Biodiversity and Conservation Science program at the Arizona Institute for Resilience at the University of Arizona