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Marine Spatial Ecologist
Biogeography Branch
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Silver Spring, MD 20910
(301) 713-3028 x157
brian[dot]kinlan[at]gmail[dot]com
NOTE: This website is not an official U.S. government site and is in no way associated with any US government entity.
Ph.D., Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology,
University of California, Santa Barbara
(2007)
B.S., Biology and Organismal Biology,
Yale University (1999)
Curriculum Vitae: pdf
/ interactive
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I am a broadly trained population and community
ecologist interested in processes that give
rise to patterns in the distribution, abundance, diversity and dynamics
of organisms. I work at the interface between theory and
data, combining statistical,
mathematical, computational, and bio-informatic
approaches to test
hypotheses and build a predictive
multi-scale understanding of ecological pattern
and dynamics.
My research seeks to expand
the predictive frontiers of population and
community ecology, and to forge theoretical and empirical
links between
ecology and large-scale patterns of biogeography,
biodiversity,
ecosystem function, and evolution. A synthetic,
quantitative,
predictive approach to ecology that integrates across scales without
neglecting the important details of organismal biology, ecology, and
physiology is fundamental to answering the pressing challenges of conservation, management, and
sustainable use of ecological resources
in a changing world.
NEW! Dr. Kinlan has moved to the NOAA Biogeography Branch effective August 2010 [read more...]
NEW! Post-glacial climate change in kelp forests [read more...]
NEW! Upcoming talk at Western Society of Naturalists meeting in Seaside, CA Nov 12-15, 2009 [read more...]
NEW! Upcoming talk at ASLO/AGU/TOS Ocean Sciences meeting in Portland, OR Feb 22-26, 2010 [read more...]
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Research
Philosophy and Themes
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1. Integration across scales. My
work often considers broader space scales and longer time
scales than traditionally
addressed by ecological experiments. My interest in linking local and
organismal processes to large scale patterns has been
driven both by opportunities for new basic ecological
understanding, and pressing
applied
questions
that require ecology to meet the challenge of large-scale prediction: climate
change, management, conservation, ecological economics. At
large
scales,
traditional experimental designs are logistically difficult and
ill-equipped to
account for the effects of multiple correlated, dynamic, nonlinear
processes
interacting across disparate scales in space and time.
To test hypotheses and make predictions
about
distribution, abundance, and community structure at large scales, one
must
explicitly consider the spatial and temporal structure of variation in
ecological variables, and the mechanistic origins of this
spatiotemporal
pattern.
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2. Theoretical,
quantitative, and
statistical integration
of theory and data.
Theoretical and empirical ecologists can no longer afford to work in
isolation
or pay mere lip service to each other’s contributions.
Ecological observation and
experimentation
without a theoretical framework wastes resources and misses
opportunities to
build and test predictive theories.
Theory
not directly motivated by
patterns in nature is at best a
curiosity, and at worst misleading and counter-productive. |
| 3. Ecological
implications of coupling and feedback between biological and physical
processes.
Biological and physical processes are
intimately linked at every level of biological organization. The recognition of this
fact in molecular and
cellular biology last century led to a revolution in predictive
understanding. A
rigorous quantitative approach to ‘ecological
biophysics’—the study of how organismal traits related to
survival,
growth,
reproduction, and dispersal interact with the physical structure and
dynamics
of the environment to give rise to ecological pattern and
dynamics—stands to
foster a similar revolution in ecology. |
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Research
Questions
My research
is organized around several sets of basic ecological questions:
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1. What are the causes, patterns, and
consequences of variation
in scales of demography and dispersal? How does
observed
variation in life history traits influence responses to environmental
variability in natural communities?
2. How do demographic
and environmental processes interact to drive the dynamic spatial
structure of populations
and communities,
including genetic
structure, spread
and range boundaries?
3. How do the spatial and
temporal dynamics of foundation species (or 'ecosystem engineers') influence communities and ecosystems?
4. What are the relative roles of biological and physical processes in shaping the trophic
structure and dynamics of ecosystems at regional to global scales?
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These
central ecological questions lead naturally to applied questions
such as:
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1. How will populations and communities
respond to climate change?
2. How do spatial and temporal scales of
resource use, management, and conservation interact with
natural scales
of populations, communities, and ecosystems?
3. Can life history traits guide the design and assessment of
conservation, management, and sustainable
harvest strategies?
4. How does spatial and temporal
variability in the environment influence management, conservation, and
economics of coupled human natural systems?
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Study
System: Marine Environments
The marine environment is an
ideal study system in which to ask these questions. Coastal
zones are a nexus of biological productivity, strong
bio-physical
coupling, and human populations and economies. Benthic marine
organisms are easily studied and manipulated as adults but
variation in
the larval dispersal phase means the spatial scales of population
dynamics vary over many orders of magnitude. Oceanographic processes
that deliver larvae, food, and disturbance to marine ecosystems
confront organisms with variability at a wide range of time
scales. Geomorphological
complexity interacts with
oceanography to create a complex and dynamic spatial arena in which
ecological processes unfold. And importantly for any
quantitative approach that merges theory and data, long-term, large
scale ecological
and environmental observations are widely available
from marine stations, oceanographic cruises, and satellites.
I have worked with intertidal
and subtidal
rocky and soft-bottom
benthic communities in temperate and tropical regions throughout the
world. Regardless of the system, the orientation of
my research around ecological questions leads to results broadly
relevant to ecology. The marine aspect of my work permits
explicit comparisons of
marine and terrestrial systems that have led to
useful ecological insights on topics ranging from dispersal (Kinlan
& Gaines 2003), invasive species population growth and spread (Thornber et al. 2004; Kinlan et al.
2005), and geographic ranges (Kinlan &
Hastings 2005), to post-glacial climate change (Kinlan et al. 2005; Graham, Kinlan & Grosberg 2009).
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Current
Basic Research Projects
Focal
research projects:
- Spatiotemporal dynamics of Giant
Kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) forests in California - forecasting the dynamics of an ecosystem engineer
- Larval connectivity matrices across species' ranges
from natural tag-recapture data (recent talk)
- Using coastal topography to predict the spatial structure
of
marine populations, communities, and ecosystems
Other
projects:
- Simulating stochastic connectivity in turbulent environments
- Statistical methods for cross-scale integration of remote sensing and
ecological data
- Genetic
structure in non-equilibrium
populations with complex patterns of connectivity
- Spatial structure
and dynamics of upwelling cells along coastlines
- Global deep-water kelp forest
distribution (led
to discovery of deep water tropical kelp forests in the Galapagos Islands in 2007)
- Global patterns of kelp deforestation and consumer-resource dynamics
- Assessing kelp forest biomass
and productivity from space
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Current
Applied Research Projects
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- Connecting life history and economics of fisheries – developing a general trait-based
framework to
predict
the increase in value from bioeconomic optimization of fishery
management. [read more...]
- Historical ecology of
exploited species – applying hierarchical
Bayesian models to estimate changes in the size-structured population
dynamics of California spiny lobsters (Panulirus interruptus)
over the past century, and to examine cascading
ecosystem effects of long-term fishing on kelp forests via
altered
trophic dynamics. [abstract] [presentation]
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Forecasting
responses of kelp forest ecosystems
to El Nino-Southern Oscillation events [presentation]
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Detecting effects of Marine Protected
Areas – effects of protection
from fishing on kelp forest habitats from short time series with high environmental
noise. [handout] / [presentation]
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Bioeconomics of rights-based fisheries
reform in the Gulf of California, Mexico [white paper]
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