2024 Keynote Speakers
Friday Keynote:
Smart Reforestation – from principle to practice
Dr. Katherine Sinacore is a Research Economist and Forester at the US Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station. Having recently transitioned to Colorado after five years at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, Katherine’s work has been driven by a long-standing curiosity about the factors that influence tree growth—a curiosity that began when she struggled to plant and grow trees in her own backyard as a teenager.
Understanding the biological factors that contribute to sustainable tree growth is clearly an important global issue, but trees are grown in diverse regions of the world within communities that face varied economic incentives and socio-cultural perspectives. How do we address both the environmental and social challenges of reforestation projects? Katherine’s approach is to collaborate closely with local communities to co-design reforestation projects, gather and analyze data, and disseminate findings that support informed decision-making processes. In her talk, Katherine will present an analysis of forest restoration methods in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), focusing on their financial viability and sustainability. Drawing from extensive, long-term datasets collected in Panama, she will detail the economic prospects of three forest restoration approaches under different cost-sharing and carbon payment structures, with income generated through timber harvests. Katherine’s research will highlight the variability in economic outcomes, demonstrating that while some restoration methods may be financially sustainable, others face significant challenges. She underscores the need for integrating growth and survival data from field trials with advanced financial modeling to better understand the economic barriers and potential pathways for successful forest restoration in LMICs.
Saturday Keynote:
Dr. Kyle Horton is an assistant professor at Colorado State University in the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology. He uses remote-sensing tools, like radar, to better understand how many migrants fill the nighttime airspace, determine where and when migrants are impacted by artificial light, and how these data can be integrated with community science records to better understand migration and forecast movements.
Earth’s lower atmosphere is a critical ecological habitat. Trillions of organisms live, forage, and migrate through this medium — yet rarely is this space considered a primary habitat for ecological or conservation prioritization. For this reason, it is one of the least studied habitats, however it serves as a global conduit for the transfer of biomass, weather, and inorganic materials. Dr. Horton will share how radar remote sensing tools can illuminate our understanding of these important aerial niches and share insights of animal airspace usage from across the United States.