Elizabeth Madin
Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology
University of California
Santa Barbara, California, USA 93106
madin@lifesci.ucsb.edu
Elizabeth Madin is currently working on her doctoral studies
in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology
at the University of California – Santa Barbara. Her
research focuses on the impacts of fishing, both direct and
indirect, on coral reef food web structure. To better understand
these impacts, she conducts field research in the Line Islands
of the central Pacific ocean, specifically at Kiritimati
and Tabuaeran Islands of Kiribati and Palmyra Atoll. These
islands represent a gradient of human influence from nearly
pristine to heavily impacted, and thus present an ideal study
system for examining the ecosystem-wide effects of human
activities on island ecosystems. Palmyra Atoll is one of
the few remaining “pristine” coral reef systems
and represents a unique opportunity to understand what coral
reefs looked like prior to large-scale human influence. Interestingly,
Palmyra Atoll also supports one of the largest remaining
undisturbed stands of the rare Pisonia beach forest in the
Pacific. However, despite Palmyra’s protected status
these forests are currently undergoing a rapid decline, possibly
as a result of an outbreak of a scale insect. Research is
currently underway to understand the causes of this outbreak
and mitigate its effect(s) on Palmyra’s Pisonia forests.
Prior to her doctoral research, Elizabeth worked at the
Australian Institute of Marine Science on a large-scale project
examining the effect(s) of changes in coastal land-use patterns
on adjacent coral reef ecosystems in the Wet Tropics region
of Queensland, Australia. This research highlighted the role
that conversion of coastal land from tropical forest to agriculture
can play in the degradation of coral reef ecosystems such
as the Great Barrier Reef. Additionally, she has worked with
the Kowanyama Land Management Office in the aboriginal community
of Kowanyama on Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria to
establish a community-based fishery monitoring program. In
addition to this work, she has been involved in marine research
in a number of other parts of the world including the Turks
and Caicos Islands, South Africa and California’s Channel
Islands and has worked as a researcher and naturalist in
forests in Kentucky and Georgia, USA. Through her past and
future research, Elizabeth’s overarching goal is better
understand the complex interactions between human activities
and natural systems and how the structure and function of
these systems can be preserved in the face of growing human
impacts.
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