Jennifer Lee is an Antarctic researcher, best known for her work on invasion biology. She is the Environment Officer in the Government of

South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands ) , anthem = "God Save the King" , song_type = , song = , image_map = South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in United Kingdom.svg , map_caption = Location of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in the southern Atlantic Oce ...

Early life and education

Lee grew up in the

Peak District The Peak District is an upland area in England at the southern end of the Pennines. Mostly in Derbyshire, it extends into Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire. It includes the Dark Peak, where moorla ...

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

, UK. She received her PhD from the Centre for Invasion Biology,

Stellenbosch University Stellenbosch University ( af, Universiteit Stellenbosch) is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant ...

, South Africa. She then worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch University.

Career and impact

Lee is an ecologist and has focused on Antarctic and

sub-Antarctic The sub-Antarctic zone is a region in the Southern Hemisphere, located immediately north of the Antarctic region. This translates roughly to a latitude of between 46° and 60° south of the Equator. The subantarctic region includes many islands ...

systems since 2006. Lee has diverse interests including invasion biology, population genetics, species distribution modelling and invertebrate physiology. Her research on alien species in Antarctica influenced global thinking about the risks posed by the increased presence of alien vegetation due to Antarctic tourism and Antarctic research teams. Lee has completed several field seasons on Marion Island and three field seasons in the Antarctic; for two of these Antarctic field seasons she was the field operator, making her the first woman field operator for the

South African National Antarctic Programme The South African National Antarctic Programme (or SANAP) is the South African government's programme for research in the Antarctic and Subantarctic. Three research stations fall under this programme: the Antarctica research station SANAE IV, ...

(SANAP). She was also the second woman Chief Scientist for land based science during a field season to Marion Island. Lee moved to the

Falkland Islands The Falkland Islands (; es, Islas Malvinas, link=no ) is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and about from Cape Dubouze ...

to begin work as the Environment Officer in the Government of

in early 2012. She is works on projects to eradicate non-native plants and animals (including rats and

reindeer Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 sub ...

) from South Georgia, and then monitors ecosystem recovery after removal of these pest species. She uses her research to help inform management decisions.

Awards and honours

Lee was the first scientist from a South African Institute to be awarded a highly competitive

Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) is an interdisciplinary body of the International Science Council (ISC). SCAR coordinates international scientific research efforts in Antarctica, including the Southern Ocean. SCAR's scien ...

(SCAR) fellowship.

Selected works

* Lee, J.E. and Chown, S.L., 2009. Temporal development of hull-fouling assemblages associated with an Antarctic supply vessel. ''Marine Ecology Progress Series'', ''386'', pp. 97–105. * Lee, Jennifer E., and Steven L. Chown. "Breaching the dispersal barrier to invasion: quantification and management." ''Ecological Applications'' 19.7 (2009): 1944-1959. * Lee, J.E. and Chown, S.L., 2009. Quantifying the propagule load associated with the construction of an Antarctic research station. ''Antarctic Science'',''21''(05), pp. 471–475. * Chown, S.L., Huiskes, A.H., Gremmen, N.J., Lee, J.E., Terauds, A., Crosbie, K., Frenot, Y., Hughes, K.A., Imura, S., Kiefer, K. and Lebouvier, M., 2012. Continent-wide risk assessment for the establishment of nonindigenous species in Antarctica. ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'',''109''(13), pp. 4938–4943. * Huiskes, A.H., Gremmen, N.J., Bergstrom, D.M., Frenot, Y., Hughes, K.A., Imura, S., Kiefer, K., Lebouvier, M., Lee, J.E., Tsujimoto, M. and Ware, C., 2014. Aliens in Antarctica: assessing transfer of plant propagules by human visitors to reduce invasion risk. ''Biological conservation'', ''171'', pp. 278–284.

References

External links

Jennifer Lee's webpage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Jennifer Year of birth missing (living people) Living people British women scientists British Antarctic scientists Stellenbosch University alumni Women Antarctic scientists