Science Advisory Board
The Powell Center Science Advisory Board (SAB) reviews incoming proposals and makes recommendations to the Directors, who then make the final decisions about which proposals to support. SAB members may not be subject matter experts, so prospective proposals should be written in ways that are understandable and compelling to non-specialists.
2019 Powell Center Science Advisory Board
Jill Baron
Ecosystem Ecologist
Powell Center Director
U.S. Geological Survey
Dr. Baron is an ecosystem ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and a Senior Research Ecologist with the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. Her interests include applying ecosystem concepts to management of human-dominated regions, and understanding the biogeochemical and ecological effects of climate change and atmospheric nitrogen deposition to mountain ecosystems. She is co-director of the John Wesley Powell Center for Earth System Science Analysis and Synthesis.
Marty Goldhaber
Senior Scientist Emirates
Powell Center Science Advisor
U.S. Geological Survey
Dr. Goldhaber is geochemist and an Emeritus Senior Scientist at the USGS where he received the Department of the Interior Meritorious Service and Presidential Rank Awards. He has served a rotation as the Chief Scientist for Geology and has also served as co-chair of the USGS Science Strategy Team which was charged with defining key strategic directions for the USGS. His current research is on the evolution of the broad ‘geochemical landscapes’ resulting from the interplay of geologic, geomorphologic, hydrologic, and biologic processes. Geochemical landscape studies are underway in the Sacramento Valley of California, and the Prairie Pothole region of the north central U.S. and southern Canada.
Ken Bagstad
Research Economist
Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center
U.S. Geological Survey
Dr. Bagstad is a Research Economist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, Colorado. His primary interests are in ecosystem service modeling, natural capital accounting, and artificial intelligence-based approaches for data and model integration. Ken is a long-term collaborator with the Artificial Intelligence for Environment & Sustainability (ARIES) platform and has led ecosystem services and natural capital accounting work in the United States and globally.
Charles Yackulic
U.S. Geological Survey
Dr. Yackulic is a research statistician with the US Geological Survey’s Southwest Biological Science and Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Centers in Flagstaff, AZ. His research primarily focuses on developing and fitting statistical models that integrate multiple data sources, link environmental drivers and
management actions to population and ecosystem processes, and can be used to make near and long term forecasting of system dynamics under different management alternatives. Areas of particular interest include species distribution dynamics, population dynamics, interspecific interactions, animal movement, food web dynamics and river metabolism.
Ruth Harris
U.S. Geological Survey
Ruth Harris is a Research Geophysicist in the USGS’s Earthquake Science Center. Her research focuses on understanding large earthquakes, what causes them to start, stop, and trigger other earthquakes, and determining how they generate strong ground shaking. She is the leader of a project with 20 excellent scientists who investigate a range of earthquake and tsunami research topics, and who also produce the USGS earthquake aftershock forecasts for the public.
Laura Lautz
U.S. National Science Foundation
Dr. Lautz is a Program Director in the Hydrologic Sciences Program in the Directorate of Geosciences’ Earth Science Division at the National Science Foundation. Prior to her arrival at NSF, she was the Jessie Page Heroy Professor and Department Chair of Earth Sciences at Syracuse University. Her research addresses how hydrologic processes influence water quality and movement through watersheds, with particular emphasis on how water and solutes move through paired surface and groundwater systems, heat tracing, and the nexus of water and energy systems.
Toni Lyn Morelli
Research Ecologist
U.S. Geological Survey
Toni Lyn Morelli is a Research Ecologist with the US Geological Survey, based at the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center. She earned her B.S. in Zoology at Michigan State University and her Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolution at Stony Brook University. She has been studying the impacts of global change in the U.S. and Africa for over 20 years. She is the co-founder and lead of the Refugia Research Coalition (climaterefugia.org) and the international Regional Invasive Species and Climate Change (RISCC) Management Network (risccnetwork.org), and is a pioneer in the field of Translational Ecology, which was developed to improve the impact of scientific research in addressing environmental problems. She spends any spare time taking care of a relentless 10-year-old and helping lead 7 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility committees.
Corey Lawrence
Research Ecologist
U.S. Geological Survey
Corey Lawrence is a Research Geologist with the US Geological Survey at the Geosciences Environmental Change Science Center in Denver, CO. Corey earned a PhD in Geological Sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder, where he studied the impacts of aeolian deposition on soil development and biogeochemistry in the Rocky Mountains. Corey’s current research is focused on quantification of key mechanisms and regional-scale controls on terrestrial biogeochemistry, with an emphasis on carbon cycle dynamics. In support of this work, he uses a range of approaches including field and laboratory observations and experimentation, process-based modeling, and geospatial analyses. Corey also has expertise in data synthesis and sample archiving. He is a codeveloper of the International Soil Radiocarbon Database (soilradiocarbon.org) and the US Geological Survey Soil Sample Archive.
Hedeff Essaid
Research Ecologist
U.S. Geological Survey
Hedeff Essaid is a Research Hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at Moffett Field, California. She is currently facilitating two research projects that involve teams of researchers focused on advancing integrated modeling strategies and regional water availability assessment methodologies. The modeling and assessment approaches integrate human and natural systems to examine water quantity and quality with their impacts on human and aquatic ecosystems needs. The approaches also facilitate exploration of how future water availability may evolve with changing climate, water demand, land use and land cover, water management, socioeconomics, and sea level rise. Methods are being prototyped and tested in the Delaware River Basin, and will subsequently be applied in the Upper Colorado, Illinois, Willamette, and Trinity-San Jacinto River Basins.
Catherine O'Reilly
U.S. National Science Foundation
(Photo and bio coming soon)