Catherine H. Graham

Catherine Helen Graham is an American ecologist and senior scientist who studies biodiversity, conservation biology, and species distribution. She works in the Biodiversity & Conservation Biology and Spatial Evolutionary Ecology research units at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL.^[1] From 2003 to 2017 she was an Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the Stony Brook University, and since her appointment at the WSL in 2017 she has maintained adjunct status there.^[1] She received both her M.S. degree (1995) and her Ph.D. (2000) from the University of Missouri at St. Louis, and did post-doctoral training at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley. She studies biogeography, conservation biology, and ecology.^[2] Catherine H. Graham is most noted for her analysis of statistical models to describe species' distributions (Species Distribution Modeling). This work, conducted with Jane Elith, helps researchers understand how human activities influence biodiversity and species distribution.^[3] Her paper on niche conservatism with John J. Wiens is also highly cited. They focused on how species' retention of ancestral traits may limit geographic range expansion.^[4] In many of her papers, she has sought to unite ecology and evolutionary biology to derive a better understanding of the processes driving species diversity patterns.^[5][6] In particular, she and Paul Fine laid out a framework for interpreting community assembly processes from a phylogenetic approach to quantifying beta diversity.^[7] Her research is important for predicting how ecosystems may respond to climate change and human impact.