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Great Rivers Partnership Great Rivers The Partnership The Great Rivers Mississippi Upper Lower Paraguay-Paraná Yangtze Zambezi River Science Press Releases |
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Guiding the Great Rivers Center for Conservation and Learning The work of the Great Rivers Partnership and its Center for Science and Learning is informed and guided by a group of renowned experts from around the world. They are knowledgeable in freshwater ecology, hydrology, agriculture, development, economics, social sciences and conservation. They also are interested and committed to the center’s outcomes. The brief biographies below can give only a small glimpse of the depth and breadth of experience that each member brings to the partnership.
Robin Abell
Robin Abell is a senior freshwater conservation biologist in World Wildlife Fund-United States’ Conservation Science Program and directs that organization’s freshwater science efforts. She has been at WWF for eight years, during which time she has been engaged in conservation research and planning efforts at global, continental and ecoregional scales. Peter Bryant, deputy director of the Great Rivers Partnership, leads staff across three continents for the partnership and also leads the Great Rivers Center. Bryant previously was deputy director for WWF’s International’s Global Marine Programme in Gland, Switzerland. He has directed campaigns and initiatives to reduce commercial overfishing, cultivated conservation agreements on agricultural and forestry lands, and directed communications between the Conservancy and its corporate partners. Gretchen Daily is professor of biological sciences at Stanford University. She also is senior fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment, director of the Center for Conservation Biology, director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, and chair of the Natural Capital Project. An ecologist by training, she has expertise in characterizing and protecting the conservation value of landscapes for biodiversity and ecosystem services. Edmundo Drago has studied the Paraguay-Paraná hydrosystem and its floodplains for more than 35 years. He also investigated the systems of the Patagonia Extra-andina, the morphology of the glacial lakes and brooks and lakes of Antarctica. He is a research scientist of the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina and currently is a staff member of the National Institute of Limnology. International Water Management Institute David Galat is assistant unit leader at the U. S. Geological Survey’s Missouri Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit and is associate professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences, University of Missouri. He currently represents Central U.S. large rivers in a National River Restoration Synthesis and is a member of the Upper Mississippi River System Navigation and Ecosystem Sustainability Program’s Science Panel. Bruce Hannon currently performs research on dynamic spatial modeling. For example, he and his fellow researchers have modeled the spread of disease in wild animal populations, the impact of human activity on endangered species such as the Desert Tortoise and the Sage Grouse, the spread of the Emerald Ash Borer and changes in stream flooding due to urban sprawl. He is Jubilee Professor of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana. Jonathan Higgins is a senior aquatic ecologist for the Conservancy. He supports development and application of ecological theory, spatial analytical tools and methods to support biodiversity conservation planning around the world. He was a principle investigator for conservation planning in the Upper Mississippi River basin, the Pantanal in Brazil and currently is leading the freshwater conservation planning in the upper Yangtze River Basin as part of the China Blueprint Project. Bruce McKenney, as the partnership’s ecosystem services director, brings expertise in applying economics and policy analysis to improve the environment and human well-being. He’s conducted projects for the World Bank, World Commission on Dams, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, World Wildlife Fund and the Upper Mississippi River Coordinating Committee. He currently is leading the Conservancy’s efforts to develop ecosystem services strategies for river systems, focusing on approaches for the partnership’s four focal rivers. Geoffrey Petts is pro vice chancellor at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. He also is professor of physical geography in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences and director of the Centre for Environmental Research and Training. He has expertise in hydrology, geomorphology and ecology of rivers and in the transfer of fundamental research into practice, dealing with regulated rivers and urban rivers Nicholas Pinter is associate professor of geology at Southern Illinois University. Pinter's area of research includes fluvial geomorphology and flood hydrology. During the past several years, Pinter and his students have been focusing on changes over time in flood dynamics on large river systems such as the Mississippi, Missouri, Rhine and Danube. Carmen Revenga is the senior freshwater scientist for the Conservancy’s Global Science and Indicators Program. She has more than 10 years experience developing indicators that inform international policies on freshwater ecosystems. She has authored numerous publications assessing the condition of freshwater ecosystems and their dependent species, including the Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems: Freshwater Systems and the Convention for Biological Diversity's Status and Trends of Inland Water Biodiversity. Richard Sparks is director of research for the new National Great Rivers Research and Education Center at Alton, Illinois, and a visiting professor in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences and in the Illinois Water Resources Center at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Paul West is an associate scientist with the Great Rivers Partnership. His area of expertise is in ecosystem services and helping inform and guide the Conservancy in its conservation planning, implementation and monitoring efforts. He has previously led several large-scale conservation planning efforts for the upper |
Michael Reuter and colleagues from the Great Rivers Partnership and the African Wildlife Foundation tour the Conservancy's Spunky Bottoms project along the Illinois River.© Carol Freeman
Conservancy scientists joins their colleagues from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to monitor fish populations. © The Nature Conservancy.
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