Catherine H. Graham is an American team leader and senior scientist working on the Biodiversity & Conservation Biology, and the Spatial Evolutionary Ecology research units at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL. From 2003 to 2017 she was an Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's ...

, and since her appointment at the WSL in 2017 she has maintained adjunct status there. She received both her

M.S. A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

degree (1995) and her

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

(2000) from the

University of Missouri at St. Louis A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

, and did

post-doctoral A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a Doctor of Philosophy, PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral rese ...

training at the

Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...

and the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. She studies

biogeography Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities often vary in a regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, ...

conservation biology Conservation biology is the study of the conservation of nature and of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction and the erosion of biotic interactions. It is an int ...

, and

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

. Catherine H. Graham is most noted for her analysis of statistical models to describe species' distributions ( Species Distribution Modeling). This work with

Jane Elith Professor Jane Elith is an ecologist in the School of Botany at the University of Melbourne. She graduated from the School of Agriculture and Forestry at the University of Melbourne in 1977. She specialises in ecological models that focus on spat ...

is useful in determining changes in biodiversity resulting from human activities. Her paper on niche conservatism with John J. Wiens is also highly cited. They focused on how species' retention of ancestral traits may limit geographic range expansion. In many of her papers, she has sought to unite ecology and evolutionary biology to derive a better understanding of the processes driving species diversity patterns. In particular, she and Paul Fine laid out a framework for interpreting

community A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...

assembly processes from a

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

approach to quantifying

beta diversity Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...

Honors and professional contributions

Graham was named in the 2014 Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers in the Environment/Ecology category, awarded to researchers for having an exceptional impact by ranking in the top 1% most cited researchers in their field of study. Her 2006 paperElith, J., C. H. Graham, R. P. Anderson, M. Dudík, S. Ferrier, A. Guisan, R. J. Hijmans, F. Huettmann, J. R. Leathwick, A. Lehmann, J. Li, L. G. Lohmann, B. A. Loiselle, G. Manion, C. Moritz, M. Nakamura, Y. Nakazawa, J. McC. M. Overton, A. Townsend Peterson, S. J. Phillips, K. Richardson, R. Scachetti-Pereira, R. E. Schapire, J. Soberón, S. Williams, M. S. Wisz, and N. E. Zimmermann (2006). "Novel methods improve prediction of species' distributions from occurrence data". '' Ecography'' 29:129-151. with

and others on novel methods to improve prediction of species' distributions from occurrence data, by mid-2014, had been cited about 3,000 times (Google Scholar citations July 31, 2014).

Selected publications

*Elith, J., Graham, C.H., Anderson, R.P., Dudík, M., Ferrier, S., Guisan, A., Hijmans, R.J., Huettmann, F., Leathwick, J.R., Lehmann, A., Li, J., Lohmann, L.G., Loiselle, B.A., Manion, G., Moritz, C., Nakamura, M., Nakazawa, Y., Overton, J.M., Peterson, A.T., Phillips, S.J., Richardson, K.S., Scachetti-Pereira, R., Schapire, R.E., Soberón, J., Williams, S., Wisz, M.S. & Zimmermann, N.E. (2006) Novel methods improve prediction of species' distributions from occurrence data. ''Ecography'', 29, 129–151. *Wiens J.J. and C.H. Graham. (2005) Niche conservatism: integrating evolution, ecology, and conservation biology. ''Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics'', 36: 519–539. *Graham, C.H., S. Ferrier, F. Huettman, C. Moritz and A.T. Peterson. 2004. "New developments in museum-based informatics and application in biodiversity analysis". ''Trends in Ecology and Evolution'' 19: 497–503. *Graham, C.H., S.R. Ron, J.C. Santos, C.J. Schneider and C. Moritz. 2004. "Integrating phylogenetics and environmental niche models to explore speciation mechanisms in Dendrobatid frogs". ''Evolution'' 58: 1781–1793. *Graham, C. H., & Fine, P. V. a. 2008. Phylogenetic beta diversity: linking ecological and evolutionary processes across space in time. ''Ecology Letters'' 11(12):1265–77. *Graham, C. H., Parra, J. L., Rahbek, C., & McGuire, J. a. 2009. Phylogenetic structure in tropical hummingbird communities. ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' 106 Suppl:19673–8. *Graham, C.H., C. Moritz and S.E. Williams. 2006. Habitat history improves prediction of biodiversity in a rainforest fauna. ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'', 103: 632–636.

References

External links

Personal homepage
at the EPFL
Personal CV
{{DEFAULTSORT:Graham, Catherine H. Stony Brook University faculty American women scientists Living people American ornithologists Women ornithologists American ecologists American women ecologists 1970 births Eckerd College alumni University of Missouri–St. Louis alumni American women academics 21st-century American women