Lara Hansen

Lara Hansen has directed research on the biological effects of global change (including UV-B and global warming) since 1990. Her primary focus is the redesign of conservation strategies to incorporate responses to climate change. She has directed a variety of projects around the planet exploring this issue, from coral reefs to mountain glaciers, from tigers in mangrove forests to polar bears in the Bering Sea. She was the lead author/editor of a key text on the issue of natural system adaptation to climate change, Buying Time: A User's Manual for Building Resistance and Resilience to Climate Change in Natural Systems. This manual lead to the development of an engaged stakeholder process to help resource managers and conservation practitioners create adaptation strategies applicable to their own workplans. This approach is employed in Climate Camp workshops. She is currently keenly engaged in developing the field of adaptation, building its capacity and getting it implemented. Lara was the Chief Climate Change Scientist for World Wildlife Fund leading their Impacts and Adaptations program from 2001 to 2008. In July 2008 she founded EcoAdapt, an organization with the primary goal of assisting in the development and implementation of adaptation strategies in response to climate change. In addition to her research and science experience, she also explains the effects of climate change to a broad array of audiences, including the U.S. Senate, media outlets and academic institutions (kindergarten through graduate school). She has also served on the Nobel Peace Prize awarded Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for over five years. Her work has been recognized with award of a Switzer Environmental Fellowship (1995) and an EPA Bronze Medal (2002). She earned her Ph.D. in Ecology at the University of California, Davis and her B.A. in Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her post-doctoral research was with the US EPA, Office of Research and Development.