UA News

Breshears will receive training in communicating with policy makers, media and the public.

David D. Breshears, a University of Arizona professor of natural resources, has been awarded a 2009 Leopold Leadership Fellowship.

The fellowship is awarded to outstanding environmental scientists with leadership abilities and a strong interest in communicating science to policy makers, media and the public.

"It's a great opportunity. What's important about trying to do environmental research is not just finding out how things work but figuring out why it matters and communicating it," Breshears. 

"We're used to mostly communicating with other scientists--so we focus a lot of times on details that are important within the scientific community, but sometimes those details get in the way of communicating effectively with broader audiences," he said.

Through peer networking, mentoring and media training and mock congressional hearings, the fellows learn both communication and leadership skills.

This year, 19 scientists from a range of disciplines, including marine science, geography and economics, will join 134 past fellows.

Previous Leopold Fellows from the UA are Julia E. Cole, associate professor of geosciences, and Lisa Graumlich, now professor and director of the UA's School of Natural Resources.

Graumlich said, "Faculty and graduate students at the School of Natural Resources work on a number of critical issues such as climate change, conservation of endangered species and sustainability of rangelands. Dave's fellowship will allow him to be a more effective spokesperson for his own research as well as that of his colleagues at the school."

Breshears is an ecosystems ecologist who specializes in vegetation in water-limited environments.

For more than a decade, he has studied the die-off of ponderosa pines and pinyon junipers across the Southwest that is caused by drought and rising temperatures.

"My approach to research is often trying to identify what I think is really a big question. I would rather go at a big question with a two-by-four than pick at a very specific question and go in there with tweezers," Breshears said.

He began by using historical aerial photographs taken by federal agencies to examine tree die-off caused by a severe drought that occurred in the 1950s.

The substantial mortality of ponderosa pine trees rapidly and dramatically altered the landscape, he said. He noted that similar landscape transformation occurred after a drought in 2000 that killed massive numbers of pinyon pine trees.  

It is likely the Southwest will experience more droughts and hotter temperatures in the future, he said. He anticipates additional significant changes to the Southwest's vegetation.

Breshears also studies wind and water erosion and ecohydrology, a field that highlights the relationship between ecological and hydrological processes. For example, run-off from a slope collected in a given location encourages more vegetation, which in turn affects future water run-off, thus creating a feedback system, he said.

Breshears plans to impart his fellowship training to his students at the UA. He anticipates his training will help him and his students become more effective in communicating scientific knowledge about the environment in ways that can help land managers and policy makers in their decision making.

Breshears is one of the leaders in the creation and launch of the USA National Phenology Network, an organization that encourages collaboration between citizens and scientists in order to document the life cycle events for plants and other organisms. He is also a member of the steering committee for Biosphere 2.

Breshears received his Bachelor of Science in wildlife science with a computer science minor from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, N.M. in 1985. He earned his master's and doctorate degrees in radioecology from Colorado State University in Fort Collins in 1987 and 1993, respectively, while also completing the Program in Ecological Studies. He earned his senior ecologist professional certification from the Ecological Society of America in 1998. 

From 1993-2004 Breshears was a technical staff member--ecology at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in N.M.

He joined the UA in 2004 as a professor of natural resources.

He was awarded the UA School of Natural Resources Scholarly Achievement Award in 2006 and the O'Brien Diversity Award for Excellence in Promoting Diversity from the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 2005. In 2004, he received both the Wiley Award from the British Geomorphological Research Group for best published paper of the year and a Los Alamos National Laboratory Award for leadership and mentoring.

He has served on the editorial board for the Ecological Society of America journal Ecological Applications since 2004 and is co-founding associate editor of the new Wiley journal Ecohydrology.

Breshears has published more than 60 journal publications. He teaches a course in dryland ecohydrology and vegetation and also teaches a course in leadership, and communication skills for environmental scientists.