Timothy De Chant

The Basics

I am currently a Ph. D. student at the University of California Berkeley under Dr. Maggi Kelly. My studies will focus on the use of GIS in landscape ecology with a special consideration for the preservation of trees.

I graduated from St. Olaf College (May 2003) with a B.A. in Environmental Studies, Biology, and English. I am originally from West Bend, Wisconsin, a town of 30,000 people just northwest of Milwaukee. When I arrived at college, I had my mind set on environmental concerns and how to communicate them to the larger populace. What I did not know was how I was going to focus my studies.

As time went on, I found myself leaning towards issues of conservation in the context of human expansion. Growing up in West Bend and later attending college in Northfield, MN, I witnessed the effects of suburban sprawl on the landscape and knew there was a better way to go about planning our cities.

Interests

Sprawl and the general pace of development across the world concerns me greatly. Beginning with a family trip to Costa Rica, I took a particular interest in habitat fragmentation and how to mitigate its detrimental effects on biodiversity and ecosystem stability. The development of habitat corridors is a solution which I find promising.

Furthermore, I am interested in the role of computers in conservation efforts. Over the past five years, I have used geographic information systems (GIS) extensively, from modeling wildfire to recommending conservation plans. While GIS is certainly not an end in itself, it is an important tool to ecologists and conservation biologists as the scale of environmental problems continues to increase.

As human population continues to expand and its demands increase, we will find our interests conflicting with the well being of the natural world more and more often. To alleviate the pressures on all interested parties, we will need to develop an effective system of collaborative decision-making. In this system, I would like to see myself as both citizen-expert and interpreter. Too often the marvels of modern ecology and conservation biology sit in the pages of refereed journals, unknown to the general public. In addition to my own research, I would like to "interpret" both the basics and the breakthroughs in the field to encourage a broader eco-consciousness among the populace.

About this Site

This website is your window into my world (or at least part of it). The sections are self-explainatory and I have included links to any relevant sites, including those I have authored. Browse around and let me know what you think.