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Oceans and Coasts
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Mark Spalding
Senior Marine Scientist
Contact Information
The Nature Conservancy
93 Centre Drive
Newmarket
CB8 8AW
UK
Phone: +44 1638 661961
E-mail: mspalding@tnc.org
Brief Biography
Mark is a marine scientist who has worked for many years on global assessments of biodiversity distribution, human impacts and conservation effort. He has also worked extensively on global protected areas information and assessment. Mark leads marine work for the Conservancy’s global science and indicators program. Working with an international team of scientists they are undertaking a range of broad-scale, spatially explicit analyses of marine biodiversity, condition, and future threat. This work is playing a critical role in informing conservation management, priority setting and future investment policies. The team’s work aims to influence not only the senior leadership within TNC, but also the global community: both through engagement in academic and policy fora, and in the regular and high profile, publication of scientific findings which will inform and direct academic, policy and public awareness.
Before joining TNC Mark worked for the United Nations Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre and he has published a number of influential books, reports and papers, particularly relating to tropical coastal environments (coral reefs, mangroves and seagrasses). He has also worked in the field on coral reefs of the Indian Ocean (Chagos Archipelago, Seychelles, Mauritius), looking at reef fish community structures and the impacts of fisheries and on coral bleaching. Mark is currently working with partners in the development of a marine biogeographic classification which will form the basis of future conservation assessment for TNC and others. He is writing a new and enlarged edition of the World Mangrove Atlas (Earthscan). He is lead editor of a new book on the World’s Protected Areas (California) and is also commencing work on papers describing the current distribution and gaps in the worlds marine protected areas network and a global assessment on the distribution of saltmarsh communities and species. Mark studied for a B.A. at Clare College, University of Cambridge (UK) and later a Ph.D. in the Department of Geography, also at Cambridge.
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