Jeremy B. C. Jackson
American Museum of Natural History
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Primary Section: 63, Environmental Sciences and Ecology Secondary Section: 27, Evolutionary Biology Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2019)
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Biosketch
Dr. Jeremy Bradford Cook Jackson holds emeritus positions at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Scripps Institution of Oceanography where he led the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation. He is also a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History. Jackson studies threats and solutions to human impacts on the environment and the ecology and evolution of tropical seas. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has won numerous international prizes and awards. He is the author of more than 170 scientific publications and eleven books, most recently Breakpoint: Reckoning with America’s Environmental Crises and Shifting Baselines in Fisheries: Using the Past to Manage the Future.
Research Interests
I study the historical ecology and evolution of marine ecosystems and the ways that human activities have affected their biodiversity and function. I am currently working on a synthesis of my last thirty five years of paleobiological research on the evolution of Caribbean marine communities as affected by their isolation from the Pacific Ocean due to the uplift of the Isthmus of Panama, with particular emphasis on coral reefs and associated seafloor biota. Another major focus is the decline of coral reefs due to exploitation, pollution, and climate change and the potential for reef restoration. I am also working on a new book on the historical ecology of the global tropics.
