Jill Baron, Ph.D.
Biography
Dr. Jill S. Baron is a senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and a Senior Research Ecologist with the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. Her interests include applying ecosystem concepts to management of human-dominated regions, and understanding the biogeochemical and ecological effects of climate change and atmospheric nitrogen deposition to mountain ecosystems.
She is founder and Co-Director of the John Wesley Powell Center for Earth System Science Analysis and Synthesis. She is the North American Director of the International Nitrogen Initiative. Baron was President of the Ecological Society of America in 2014, is a Certified Professional Ecologist, and a Fellow of the ESA. She was named a Woman of Vision in 2015 by Colorado Women of Influence for her work advancing women’s role in science. Baron is active in US National Climate Assessment efforts, has given testimony to Congress on western acid rain and climate change issues, and was Editor-in-Chief of Issues in Ecology, an Ecological Society of America publication for non-scientists from 2009-2012. She is founder and Principal Investigator of the Loch Vale Watershed long-term monitoring and research program in Rocky Mountain National Park, an instrumented catchment with 33 years of continuous records.
Education
- Ph.D. Ecosystem Ecology, Colorado State University, 1991
- M.S. Land Resources, University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1979
- B.S. Plant Sciences, Cornell University, 1976
Professional Experience
- 2009-present Co-Director, John Wesley Powell Center for Earth System Science Analysis and Synthesis
- 2016-present Senior Scientist, U.S. Geological Survey, Fort Collins CO
- 1996-2015 Research Ecologist; U.S. Geological Survey, Fort Collins, CO
- 1986-present Senior Research Scientist; Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO
- 2000-present Advising faculty, CSU Graduate Degree Program in Ecology
- 1993-1996 Research Ecologist; National Biological Service, Mountain Ecosystems Section, Fort Collins, CO
- 1976-1993 Research Biologist-National Park Service; Great Smoky Mountains National Park TN; Gulf Islands National Seashore MS; Water Resources Division, Washington D.C. and CO
Affiliations
- Present: Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Senior Scientist
- Present: Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Advising Faculty
- Present: Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability, Colorado State University, Faculty Affiliate
Science and Products
Accelerating changes and transformations in western mountain lakes
While research into eutrophication has been a cornerstone of limnology for more than 100 years, only recently has it become a topic for the remote alpine lakes that are icons of protected national parks and wilderness areas. National park lakes in the western U.S. are threatened by global change, specifically air pollution, warming, and their interactions, and the problem is quickly worsening...
The Western Mountain Initiative (WMI)
Western Mountain Initiative (WMI) is a long-term collaboration between FORT, WERC, NOROCK, USFS, NPS, LANL, and universities worldwide to address changes in montane forests and watersheds due to climate change. Current emphases include altered forest disturbance regimes (fire, die-off, insect outbreaks) and hydrology; interactions between plants, water, snow, nutrient cycles, and climate; and...
Western Mountain Initiative: Central Rocky Mountains
Mountain ecosystems of the western U.S. provide irreplaceable goods and services such as water, wood, biodiversity, and recreational opportunities, but their responses to global changes are poorly understood. The overarching objective of the Western Mountain Initiative (WMI) is to understand and predict the responses, emphasizing sensitivities, thresholds, resistance, and resilience, of...
Adding a nitrogen footprint to Colorado State University’s sustainability plan
As a large land grant university with more than 32,000 students, Colorado State University has both on-campus non-agricultural and agricultural sources of nitrogen (N) released to the environment. We used the Nitrogen Footprint Tool to estimate the amount of N released from different sectors of the university for the CSU 2014 academic year. The...
Kimiecik, Jacob; Baron, Jill S.; Weinmann, Timothy; Taylor, Emily Land before water: The relative temporal sequence of human alteration of freshwater ecosystems in the conterminous United States
Human alteration of ecosystems prior to Euro-American contact in the area that became the conterminous United States disproportionately affected terrestrial systems compared to freshwater ecosystems, primarily through the use of fire and agriculture in some regions of the United States. After circa 1600 AD, trapping of beaver, along with intensive...
Wohl, Ellen; Lininger, Katherine B.; Baron, Jill S. Synthesis centers as critical research infrastructure
Demand for the opportunity to participate in a synthesis-center activity has increased in the years since the US National Science Foundation (NSF)–funded National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) opened its doors in 1995 and as more scientists across a diversity of scientific disciplines have become aware of what synthesis...
Baron, Jill S.; Specht, Alison; Garnier, Eric ; Bishop, Pamela; Campbell, C. Andrew; Davis, Frank W.; Fady, Bruno; Field, Dawn; Gross, Louis J.; Guru, Siddeswara M. ; Halpern, Benjamin S; Hampton, Stephanie E.; Leavitt, Peter R.; Meagher, Thomas R.; Ometto, Jean; Parker, John N.; Price, Richard; Rawson, Casey H. ; Rodrigo, Allen ; Sheble, Laura A. ; Winter, Marten The Nitrogen Footprint Tool network: A multi-institution program to reduce nitrogen pollution
Anthropogenic sources of reactive nitrogen have local and global impacts on air and water quality and detrimental effects on human and ecosystem health. This paper uses the nitrogen footprint tool (NFT) to determine the amount of nitrogen (N) released as a result of institutional consumption. The sectors accounted for include food (consumption and...
Castner, Elizabeth A.; Leah, Allison M.; Leary, Neal; Baron, Jill S.; Compton, Jana E.; Galloway, James N.; Hastings, Meredith G.; Kimiecik, Jacob; Lantz-Trissel, Jonathan; de la Riguera, Elizabeth; Ryals, Rebecca Best practices for virtual participation in meetings: Experiences from synthesis centers
The earth environment is a complex system, in which collaborative scientific approaches can provide major benefits by bringing together diverse perspectives, methods, and data, to achieve robust, synthetic understanding (Fig. 1). Face-to-face scientific meetings remain extremely valuable because of the opportunity to build deep mutual trust and...
Hampton, Stephanie E.; Halpern, Benjamin S.; Winter, Marten; Balch, Jennifer K.; Parker, John N.; Baron, Jill S.; Palmer, Margaret; Schildhauer, Mark P.; Bishop, Pamela; Meagher, Thomas R.; Specht, Alison Protecting national parks from air pollution effects: Making sausage from science and policy
The story of air pollution research, policy development, and management in national parks is a fascinating blend of cultural change, vision, interdisciplinary and interagency collaboration, and science-policy-management-stakeholder collaborations. Unable to ignore the loss of iconic vistas from regional haze and loss of fish from acid rain in the...
Baron, Jill S.; Blett, Tamara; Malm, William C.; Alexander, Ruth; Doremus, Holly Key ecological responses to nitrogen are altered by climate change
Climate change and anthropogenic nitrogen deposition are both important ecological threats. Evaluating their cumulative effects provides a more holistic view of ecosystem vulnerability to human activities, which would better inform policy decisions aimed to protect the sustainability of ecosystems. Our knowledge of the cumulative effects of these...
Greaver, T.L.; Clark, C.M.; Compton, J.E.; Vallano, D.; Talhelm, A. F.; Weaver, C.P.; Band, L.E.; Baron, Jill S.; Davidson, E.A.; Tague, C.L.; Felker-Quinn, E.; Lynch, J.A.; Herrick, J.D.; Liu, L.; Goodale, C.L.; Novak, K. J.; Haeuber, R. A. The differing biogeochemical and microbial signatures of glaciers and rock glaciers
Glaciers and rock glaciers supply water and bioavailable nutrients to headwater mountain lakes and streams across all regions of the American West. Here we present a comparative study of the metal, nutrient, and microbial characteristics of glacial and rock glacial influence on headwater ecosystems in three mountain ranges of the contiguous U.S.:...
Fegel, Timothy S.; Baron, Jill S.; Fountain, Andrew G.; Johnson, Gunnar F.; Hall, Edward K. Using science-policy integration to improve ecosystem science and inform decision-making: Lessons from U.S. LTERs
This Special Session took place on 12 August 2015 at the 100th Meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Baltimore, Maryland, and was conceived of and coordinated by the Science Policy Exchange. The Science Policy Exchange (SPE) is a boundary- spanning organization established to work at the interface of science and policy to confront...
Templer, Pamela H.; Lambert, Kathleen Fallon; Weiss, Marissa; Baron, Jill S.; Driscoll, Charles T.; Foster, David R. Long-term reactive nitrogen loading alters soil carbon and microbial community properties in a subalpine forest ecosystem
Elevated nitrogen (N) deposition due to increased fossil fuel combustion and agricultural practices has altered global carbon (C) cycling. Additions of reactive N to N-limited environments are typically accompanied by increases in plant biomass. Soil C dynamics, however, have shown a range of different responses to the addition of reactive N that...
Boot, Claudia M.; Hall, Ed K.; Denef, Karolien; Baron, Jill S. Optimizing available network resources to address questions in environmental biogeochemistry
An increasing number of network observatories have been established globally to collect long-term biogeochemical data at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Although many outstanding questions in biogeochemistry would benefit from network science, the ability of the earth- and environmental-sciences community to conduct synthesis studies within...
Hinckley, Eve-Lyn; Suzanne Andersen; Baron, Jill S.; Peter Blanken; Gordon Bonan; William Bowman; Sarah Elmendorf; Fierer, Noah; Andrew Fox; Keli Goodman; Katherine Jones; Danica Lombardozzi; Claire Lunch; Jason Neff; Michael SanClements; Katherine Suding; Will Wieder Nutrients in the nexus
Synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizer has enabled modern agriculture to greatly improve human nutrition during the twentieth century, but it has also created unintended human health and environmental pollution challenges for the twenty-first century. Averaged globally, about half of the fertilizer-N applied to farms is removed with the crops, while...
Davidson, Eric A.; Niphong, Rachel; Ferguson, Richard B.; Palm, Cheryl; Osmond, Deanna L.; Baron, Jill S.
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Much Deserved Award Presented to Dr. Jill Baron
Every two years, the U.S. Geological Survey reviews top scientists for possible promotion to Senior Scientist (ST) - the highest level that a federal research scientist can achieve.