Thank you for visiting my website!  I am a PhD candidate in Gary Lamberti’s Stream Ecology Lab at the University of Notre Dame and a fellow of the NSF IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship) program: Global Linkages of Biology, the Environment, and Society (GLOBES).  The goal of the GLOBES program is to seek innovative solutions to human and environmental health problems. 

As a GLOBES fellow, I use interdisciplinary research to inform ecosystem restoration efforts, merging the disciplines of ecology, history, and law.  Restoration is defined by the Society for Ecological Restoration as assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.  Ecosystem restoration can improve land and water productivity, enhance conservation, recover populations of endangered species, and restore ecosystem function.  We use ecological observation, historical ecology, restoration project monitoring, and policy analysis to evaluate and inform restoration within a broad spatial scale ranging from streams to watersheds. 

Ecological observations help identify declines in ecosystem function or in populations of key species, such as brook trout.  Historical ecology studies can help determine the need for restoration and aid in planning, monitoring, and adapting restoration projects.  For example, we have examined historical materials to describe the history of the wild and scenic Namekagon River in Wisconsin, which has informed National Park Service restoration projects planned for 2010 to enhance brook trout habitat.  In addition to historical ecology, we have conducted long-term monitoring of a reach-scale restoration in an urban stream to evaluate restoration methods. 

Because some ecosystems may be too fragmented to allow for recovery to historical trajectories, alternatives such as species translocation and assisted colonization have been proposed for recovering threatened and endangered species, which we illustrated with an endangered butterfly and endangered plant species.  Assisted colonization has been used to mitigate for habitat loss.  For example, the Virginia round-leaf birch was down-listed from endangered to threatened because ex situ conservation efforts by botanical gardens allowed for assisted colonization organized by the Fish and Wildlife Service (Shirey and Lamberti 2010).  However, there are risks associated with moving any species, including the transport of pests and pathogens. 

When researching examples of endangered species that had been moved outside of their historical range, we noticed that several endangered plant species were readily available to buy over the Internet.  Sales of endangered plants in interstate commerce require a permit issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, even if specimens are of cultivated origin.  However, very few sellers appear to be obtaining the proper permits.  This developed into our recent invited comment article published in Nature after presenting the research at the Ecological Society of America annual meeting (Shirey and Lamberti 2011. Nature 469, 465-467).  Please email me if you would like more information. 

In addition to support from the GLOBES NSF IGERT program, we have also received financial support from the Notre Dame Center for Aquatic Conservation, the Notre Dame College of Science, the National Park Service, and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Please explore my website further, including research, publications, news, and a curriculum vitae. 

Contact Patrick Shirey