People

Dominique Bachelet, Ph.D.
Director, Climate Change Science

Contact Information
The Nature Conservancy
Global Climate Change Initiative
120 East Union
Olympia, WA 98501

Phone: 206-604-5549
E-mail: dbachelet@tnc.org

Brief Biography
Dominique was born and raised in northern France. She received her Master’s degree in 1978 from the University of Lille where she studied Plant and Animal Biology. She completed the first year’s course-work requirements for a French Ph D in Ecology in 1979 at the University of Orsay (Paris XI) and also finished a short project looking at water requirements for African migratory grasshoppers under the direction of Bernard Saugier (just back from a Canadian IBP prairie site) and Yves Gillon. She then left France to start a Ph D with Bill Hunt in West Virgina that she finished in 1983 in Colorado with co-advisors Bill Detling and Bill Parton. The project was to simulate the interactions between plant and animals in terms of carbon, water and nutrient cycling in the shortgrass prairie using the first version of the still-unknown biogeochemical model Century. In 1984, after a brief 3 months in Thailand teaching a simulation modeling class, she did a postdoctoral fellowship with Wes Jarrell (and Ross Virginia, who was the other postdoctoral fellow at U.C. Riverside with Wes) simulating nitrogen fixation and carbon and nitrogen budget of mesquite in the Sonoran desert. After the end of the NSF-funded project, she moved on to the Jornada LTER site in New Mexico working with Jim Reynolds on various aspects of a generic desert model. She worked with Pete Wierenga while at New Mexico State University analyzing soil data for the LTER and organizing a modeling workshop. She was hired in 1988 by a contracting agency for the US EPA in Corvallis, Oregon, to work on climate change impacts on paddy rice ecosystems in Asia. She worked in an international team with modelers from the Netherlands (Fritz Penning de Vries) and methane emission experts from Germany (Uli Neue), and rice physiologists from the USA, Philippines, Japan, China and India until the end of the project in 1994. She then spent one year in France, working on the simulation of Mediterranean forests productivity with the Montpellier group headed by Serge Rambal and Joffre. This was followed by one year in John Aber’s group at University of New Hamsphire working with John’s PnET model, Neilson’s MAPSS model, and the WoodsHole group’s model TEM. In the Fall of 1996, she started working in Corvallis at the Forestry Sciences Laboratory with Ron Neilson’s USFS team working on climate change impacts on terrestrial systems and teaching at Oregon State University. In the Fall of 2006, she was invited faculty by the University of Versailles-St Quentin, working with Philippe Ciais’ team at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement. She started working for The Nature Conservancy January 10, 2007.

Education
1983 Ph. D. Botany and Plant Pathology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO. 
1979 DEA Plant Ecology, Université de Paris XI, Centre d'Orsay, France.
1978 MAITRISE Plant Biology, Université des Sciences et Techniques, Lille I, France. 
1977 LICENCE Plant Biology,  Université des Sciences et Techniques, Lille I, France. 
1976 DEUG B Life Sciences, Université des Sciences et Techniques, Lille I, France.

Professional Associations/Memberships
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Geophysical Union
Soil Science Society of America
Ecological Society of America

Scientific Advisory Panels
Reviewer for scientific journals: BioScience, Biogeochemistry, Catena, Climatic Change, Ecological Applications, Ecological Modelling, Ecosystems, Forest Science, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Landscape Ecology, Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems, Soil Science.

Reviewer for National Agencies: USDA National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program, USDA Fund for Rural America, USDA Managed Ecosystems Program, DOE Program for Ecosystem Research, NSF, Western Region’s Water Resources Research Competitive Grants Program, U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation.

Contributor to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Reports:

• Chapter 13. Agriculture in a changing climate: impacts and adaptation. In: Watson et al., Climate Change 1995: Impacts, adaptations and mitigation of climate change: scientific-technical analyses. Published for IPCC 1996, Cambridge University Press.
• Chapter 17. Potential consequences of climate variability and change for the forests of the United States. In: National Assessment Synthesis Document. 2000. http://www.cgrio.org.NationalAssessment/

Selected Publications
Bachelet D., J.M. Lenihan, R. P. Neilson, R.J. Drapek, and T. Kittel. 2005. Simulating the response of natural ecosystems and their fire regimes to climatic variability in Alaska. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 35:2224-2257.

Bachelet D., R. P. Neilson, J.M. Lenihan, and R.J. Drapek. 2004. Regional differences in the carbon source-sink potential of natural vegetation in the U.S. Environmental Management 33 (Supp.#1): S23-S43 DOI: 10.1007/s00267-003-9115-4.

Bachelet D., R.P. Neilson, T. Hickler, R.J. Drapek, J. M. Lenihan, M.T. Sykes, B. Smith, S. Sitch, and K. Thonicke. 2003. Simulating past and future dynamics of natural ecosystems in the United States. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 17(2): 1045 DOI:10.1029/2001GB001508.

Bachelet D., R.P. Neilson, J. M. Lenihan, and R.J. Drapek. 2001. Climate change effects on vegetation distribution and carbon budget in the U.S. Ecosystems 4:164-185.

Bachelet D., J.M. Lenihan, C. Daly, R.P. Neilson, D.S. Ojima, and W.J. Parton. 2001. MC, a Dynamic Vegetation Model for estimating the distribution of vegetation and associated carbon and nutrient fluxes, Technical Documentation Version 1.0. USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Station, General Technical Report PNW-GTR-508. 95pp.

Bachelet D. and R.P. Neilson. 2000. Chapter 2. Biome redistribution under climate change. pp18-44. In: L.A. Joyce and R. Birdsey (co-editors). USDA Forest Service Global Climate Change Program Highlights: The impacts of climate change on America’s forests. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report RMRS-GTR-59.

Bachelet D., J.M. Lenihan, C. Daly, and R.P. Neilson. 2000. Simulated fire, grazing and climate change impacts at Wind Cave National Park, SD. Ecological Modelling 134(2 3):229 244.