Sustainability Solutions Expert

Brian J. McGill, Ph.D.Professor of Ecological Modeling, School of Biology and Ecology and Senator George J.Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, University of MaineCooperating Assistant Professor, Climate Change Institute, University of Maine

Office Address:Deering Hall, Rm 303

Mailing Address:School of Biology and Ecology202 Deering HallUniversity of MaineOrono, ME 04469-5741

Contact InformationPhone: 207/281-2680Email: brian.mcgill@maine.eduBlog: http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/author/brim-cgill/Lab: www.brianmcgill.org/

Profile:Brian McGill is a macroecologist and faculty member at the University of Maine. His re-search examines how human-caused global change, especially global warming and landcover change, affect communities, biodiversity, and global ecology. e goal of McGill’swork is to understand the patterns and processes controlling the distribution and abun-dance of organisms at medium to large scales in order to develop more predictive theo-ries of distribution and abundance. McGill’s current projects pertain to biodiversity atlarge scales – large areas of space, long periods of time, and many species. He studiesspecies-specific trait information using advanced regression and spatial and temporalstatistical methods to analyze the data. His Maine-specific research seeks to understandhow climate change is going to affect the plants, animals, and crops in the state. In theshort term, one question his work is addressing is whether or not potatoes and blueber-ries will continue to grow in Maine’s climate.

McGill’s SSI project aims to address diverse stakeholders’ questions about the effects ofclimate change on key organisms in Maine in order to help stakeholders better plan forthe future. His team has organized a workshop with more than 15 stakeholders, includ-ing disease specialists, foresters, park managers, state wildlife managers, conservationorganizations, and representatives from the tourism and outdoor recreation industries toidentify their primary questions about climate change. In addition to building computermodels that explore the role of land-use change on climate driven migrations, the re-searchers will use a variety of methods to address stakeholders’ information needs.

McGill’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Canadian FundFor Innovation, iPlant, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Na-tional Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), Natural Sciences and En-gineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Netherlands Organization forScientific Research, the Senator George J. Mitchell Center and Maine’s Sustainability So-lutions Initiative, and Maine EPSCoR.

His work has been published in several peer reviewed journals including the AmericanJournal of Botany, Biodiversity and Conservation, Ecological Informatics, Ecology,Ecosystems, Journal of Plant Ecology, Philosophy of Science, Trends in Ecology andEvolution, and Oikos. He is the author of multiple book chapters on biodiversity, speciesabundance distribution, and spatial statistics.

Research Interests:Global ChangeBiodiversityLarge Scale EcologyDecision Support Systems inStakeholder EngagementSustainability Science

Brian J. McGill, Ph.D.

Courses:BIO 205 Natural History ofMaine

BIO 597 Advanced Biometryfor Environmental Science

BIO 525 Community Ecology

EES 590 Readings in Sustain-ability Science

EES 597 Boundary Spanningfor Sustainability Solutions

EES 597 Ecology and Evolu-tion of Everything

Senator George J. MitchellCenter for Sustainability

Solutions

5710 Norman Smith HallOrono, Maine 04469

207/581-3244207/518-3320 faxUMGM@maine.edu

www.umaine.edu/mitchellcenter

5/2015

Research Projects:New England SustainabilityConsortium: Safe Beaches &Shellfish Beds

Integrating Global SpeciesDistribution Data

Journal Articles:Lazarus, Elijah; Brian McGill. “Pushing the pace of tree species migration” – (PLOS One2014 9(8): e105380. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0105380)McGill, Brian J; Maria A Dornelas; Nicholas J Gotelli; Anne E. Magurran “15 forms ofbiodiversity trends in the Anthropocene” (Trends in Ecology and Evolution 201530(2):104-113)Dornelas, Maria; Nicholas J. Gotelli; Brian McGill; Hideyasu Shimadzu; Faye Moyes;Caya Sievers; Anne E. Magurran. “Assemblage Time Series Reveal Biodiversity Changebut Not Systematic Loss” (Science 2014 344(18 Apr):296-299)Dalby, Lars; Brian J. McGill; Fox, Anthony David; Svenning; Jens-Christian. “’Seasonalitydrives global-scale diversity patterns in waterfowl (Anseriformes) via temporal niche ex-ploitation” (Global Ecology and Biogeography 2014 231(5):550-562)Colgan, Charles; Malcolm Hunter, Brian McGill, Aaron Weiskittel, “Managing the mid-dle ground: Forests in the transition zone between cities and remote areas” (LandscapeEcology 2014 29:1133–1143)Samson, J; Berteaux, D; McGill, Brian J. and Humphries, M. “Geographic disparities andmoral hazards in the predicted impacts of climate change on human populations”(Global Ecology and Biogeography 2011) 20(4):532-544Maria Dornelas, Anne E Magurran, Stephen T Buckland, Anne Chao, Robin L Chazdon,Robert K Colwell, Tom Curtis, Kevin J Gaston, Nicholas J Gotelli, Matthew A Kosnik,Brian McGill, Jenny L McCune, Hélène Morlon, Peter J Mumby, Lise Øvreås, AngelikaStudeny, and Mark Vellend. “Quantifying temporal change in biodiversity: challengesand opportunities,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Volume 280,Issue 1750 (2012).Catherine M. Hulshof, Cyrille Violle, Marko J. Spasojevic, Brian McGill, EllenDamschen, Susan Harrison, and Brian J. Enquist. “Intra-specific and inter-specific varia-tion in specific leaf area reveal the importance of abiotic and biotic drivers of species di-versity across elevation and latitude,” Journal of Vegetation Science, Article firstpublished online: 28 JAN 2013Book Chapters:Brian McGill, “A macroecological approach to the equilibrial vs. nonequilibrial debateusing bird populations and communities” In e Balance of Nature and Human Impacts,ed. Klaus Rohde (Cambridge United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 103-118.Soware Programs:2011 Palamedes (a variety of tools for exploring species abundance distributions) (cur-rently by email to author, to be published on web).2006 A numerical solution to the analytical form of the zero sum multinomial (availableat http://www.esapubs.org/archive/ecol/E087/080/).2003 Monte Carlo simulation of neutral communities for the estimation of parameters(Available at http://www.brianmcgill.org/zsm).

Selected Publications:

DegreesMichigan State University, NSFInterdisciplinary InformaticsPostdoctoral Fellowship

University of Arizona, Ph.D.(Ecology and Evolutionary Bi-ology)

Harvard University, A.B. (Math-ematics)

Student OpportunitiesChanges frequently – ContactDr. McGill