Editorial Board

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Joel Baker
Chemistry

Joel Baker

University of Washington Tacoma, Puget Sound Institute

Professor Joel Baker holds the Port of Tacoma Chair in Environmental Science at the University of Washington Tacoma and is the Science Director of the Center for Urban Waters in Tacoma. He earned a B.S. degree in Environmental Chemistry from Syracuse University (1982) and M.S. (1985) and Ph.D. (1988) degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Baker's research interests center around the transport of organic contaminants in the environment, specifically atmospheric transport and deposition, aerosol chemistry, the dynamics of contaminant transport in estuaries, and modeling the exposure and transfer of bioaccumulative chemicals in aquatic food webs. He teaches courses in water quality modeling, environmental chemistry, and quantitative methods.  Baker is a member of the Puget Sound Partnership Science Panel, which he chaired from 2007-2009.
Patrick Christie
Social Science

Patrick Christie

University of Washington School of Marine and Environmental Affairs

Patrick has led various comparative, socio-ecological research projects in the US, Philippines, Indonesia and Latin America to inform the practice of marine resource management. He is particularly interested in the human dimensions of marine conservation employing marine protected areas, ecosystem-based management, and conservation fishing technologies—research which resulted in a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation. He recently taught a joint course and research seminar with the University of Washington and the Northwest Indian College on tribal fishing rights in Puget Sound. He regularly provides technical advice on the human dimensions of marine conservation to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, World Bank, USAID, and various governmental and non-governmental environmental organizations. In addition to his scholarship, he is actively engaged in marine protected area design and implementation in various locations. He draws from his three years of experience living in a Philippine fishing community implementing a community-based marine protected area as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He is an Editor-In-Chief for the journal Coastal Management , board member for the Coastal Conservation and Education Foundation in the Philippines, and former national board member for The Coastal Society. He has a Bachelors degree in zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Masters degree in conservation biology and Doctorate in environmental sociology and policy from the University of Michigan.
Tessa Francis
Ecosystem-based Management

Tessa Francis

University of Washington Tacoma, Puget Sound Institute

Tessa is the Lead Ecosystem Ecologist at the University of Washington Tacoma’s Puget Sound Institute. She is an aquatic ecologist, and her research is related to aquatic food webs, and the impacts of environmental change on food-web dynamics. Tessa is interested in the important associations between terrestrial and aquatic habitats, and how watershed and shoreline dynamics impact aquatic food webs and populations. Tessa is presently engaged in projects related to forage fish and food webs in Puget Sound, including ecosystem-based management of forage fish, nearshore habitat limitation of Pacific herring, the movement of contaminants through pelagic food webs, and assessing trade-offs among different conservation goals in a food-web context. Outside of Puget Sound, Tessa is collaborating on projects ranging from the effects of environmental change on plankton in Alaskan lakes, to US West Coast-wide age truncation in Pacific herring. She is currently chairing a Study Panel on the Ecosystem-based Management of Forage Fish. Tessa received a bachelor’s degree in political science from UC Berkeley, a bachelor’s degree in forestry from the University of Washington, and a PhD in biology from the University of Washington.
Joe Gaydos
Biology - Birds and Mammals

Joe Gaydos

University of California; SeaDoc Society

Joe Gaydos is the Chief Scientist for the SeaDoc society, a marine ecosystem health program of the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center. Over the past eight years, he has actively participated in the collection and dissemination of scientific data on marine wildlife ecosystems focusing on the Puget Sound/Georgia Basin. He is a trained biologist and veterinarian with an advanced degree specializing in the health and diseases of wildlife populations.
Parker MacCready
Physical Environment

Parker MacCready

University of Washington School of Oceanography

Parker MacCready is a physical oceanographer, working in coastal and estuarine regions. His research group uses numerical modeling and observations in projects exploring the linkages of global climate with coastal processes, harmful algal blooms, estuarine mechanical energy, and flow over rough topography.  In 1986, he received an M.S. in Engineering Science from the California Institute of Technology. He earned a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of Washington in 1991.
photo coming soon
Biology - Uplands

Timothy Quinn

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife

Timothy Quinn is Chief Scientist of the Habitat Program at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Tim received his MS degree in Physiological Ecology in 1987 and his doctorate in wildlife ecology from the University of Washington in 1992. Since 2000, Tim has been an adjunct faculty at The Evergreen State College where he teaches Conservation Biology in the Masters of Environmental Studies Program.  Quinn served on the Science Working Group that came up with scientific underpinnings and a technical framework for the development of the Puget Sound Partnership.

Charles 'Si' Simenstad
Biology - Fishes

Charles "Si" Simenstad

University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Charles (“Si”) Simenstad, Research Professor at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Science (SAFS), is an estuarine and coastal marine ecologist and coordinator of the Wetland Ecosystem Team (WET).  Si has studied the organization and function of estuarine and coastal marine ecosystems throughout Puget Sound, Washington, Oregon and California, and Alaska for over forty years.  Much of this research has focused on the functional role of estuarine and coastal habitats to support juvenile Pacific salmon and other biotic communities, and the associated ecological processes and community dynamics that are responsible for enhancing their production and life history diversity.  His research interests focus on: ecosystem-, community- and habitat-level interactions, with emphasis on predator-prey relationships; sources, organization and flow of organic matter through food webs; estuarine ecology of juvenile Pacific salmon; and, landscape-scale interaction between estuarine structure and ecological processes.  Recent research has integrated such ecosystem interactions with applied issues such as restoration and rehabilitation of estuarine and coastal wetland ecosystems, and ecological approaches to evaluating the success of coastal wetland restoration at ecosystem and landscape scales, including assessing how coastal restoration can benefit ecosystem functions, good and services. Si holds a B.S. (1969) and M.S. (1971) from the School of Fisheries at the University of Washington.

 

Climate Change

Position vacant

 

Previous board members

  • Climate Change (2012 - 22): Amy Snover, University of Washington Climate Impacts Group
  • Climate change (2012-13): Nate Mantua, University of Washington Climate Impacts Group
  • Ecosystem-based Management (2012-13): Mary Ruckelshaus, Stanford University, Natural Capital Project