Associate Professor and Associate Director Clare Aslan – School of Earth and Sustainability 

Dr. Aslan is a community ecologist and conservation biologist, interested in how global change is affecting interactions between species and also between human communities and the ecosystems they rely on. She is passionate about solutions-oriented research. Dr. Aslan’s current research explores pollinator declines as a result of environmental degradation, as well as resilience to biological invasions and fire in coupled human-natural systems. She believes that an ethical approach to conservation requires the integration of human needs and values into decision-making and planning, and that the conservation of Earth’s biodiversity ultimately requires social justice.

Dr. Aslan is also Co-Director of the Landscape Conservation Initiative (LCI), a research center at Northern Arizona University. The LCI focuses on solutions-oriented research, performed in collaboration with land and resource management agencies. Through the LCI, much of Dr. Aslan’s work centers on social-ecological systems and sustainability across the Colorado Plateau, an extensive region characterized by vast public lands, low human population density, high geological and topographic diversity, and highly diverse but understudied native species communities.