kpeterson
Main profile
Katie Peterson is a quantitative ecologist who is interested in how interspecific interactions shape community dynamics and in the applications of this ecological knowledge for 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 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 and how that impacts what is considered sustainable management within that ecosystem.
She 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 a BSc at Louisiana State University. Her background spans theoretical ecology, fisheries management, and environmental physiology. She has also been fortunate to do field work 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.