Katie A. Peterson

Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. Katie Peterson is a quantitative ecologist focused on how interspecific interactions shape community dynamics to inform conservation and sustainable management. She is also interested in the role of uncertainty in making decisions from ecological models and how this contributes to the value of information in decision science. For her postdoctoral research project at SESYNC, she is working with Associate Professor Laura Dee (University of Colorado, Boulder) and Dr. Kristin Kleisner (Environmental Defense Fund) to examine the repercussions of temperature variability in a multi-species fishery. This project seeks to determine how variability in temperature is changing the assumed dynamics in the Northeast Shelf Regional Ecosystem in the Atlantic Ocean and how that impacts what is considered sustainable management within that ecosystem. Katie earned her PhD through the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University. Prior to that, she obtained a Master of Environmental Science and Management from the Bren School at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and bachelor’s degrees in Marine Biology and Coastal Environmental Science at Louisiana State University. Her background spans theoretical ecology, fisheries management, and environmental physiology. She has also been fortunate to do fieldwork in a variety of ecosystems, including the Great Barrier Reef, wetlands in Southeastern Louisiana, and desert grasslands of central California. In her free time, Katie enjoys getting outdoors for hikes, rock climbing, and anything involving the ocean.

External Links:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LZ2QTMoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra

Image
Photo of Katie A. Peterson
2020 - 2022
Areas of Expertise
community ecology
marine science
biodiversity conservation
Research Interests
species interactions
network ecology
fisheries management
structured decision making
value of information
Methods of Expertise
mechanistic community and population models
ensemble modeling
spatial analysis in R