Brian McGill

I study ecological questions at large scales - large areas, long times, many species. It is often not realized that most of the research in ecology occurs at fairly small scales and that results at small scales do not necessarily generalize to larger scales. Many of the pressing management and environmental questions of our day are inherently large scale such as the design of optimal nature reserves and understanding the effects of global change such as climate change on living organisms.

My research focuses on understanding what factors control and drive two central properties of species: their abundance and their distribution (geographic range). I am especially interested in developing a predictive theory of how these might change under the great, unfortunate experiment that mankind is conducting known as global change including global warming and massive changes to the nutrient cycles and landcover.

Because of the large scales, doing experiments is often difficult. Most of my work centers around analyzing data using advanced database and statistical methods. We live in a time when the amount of data about both the earth and the organisms living on it is growing exponentially fast. Yet few ecologists are trained in the ecoinformatic skills to take advantage of this gift. My research and training are focused in ecoinformatics.