Lenore Fahrig

Biosketch

Lenore Fahrig, PhD, is Chancellor’s Professor of Biology and Gray Merriam Chair in Landscape Ecology at Carleton University, Canada. She earned her BSc in Biology from Queen’s University, her MSc from Carleton University, and her PhD from the University of Toronto, all in Ontario, Canada. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, a research scientist in the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, and she took up her faculty position at Carleton University in 1991. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC), a Guggenheim Fellow, and an international member of the US NAS. Awards include the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology, the Distinguished Landscape Ecologist Award from the North American Association for Landscape Ecology, the President’s Award from the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution, the Miroslaw Romanowski Medal in Environmental Science from the RSC, and the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal, Canada’s top award in Science and Engineering.

Research Interests

Dr. Fahrig studies relationships between landscape spatial pattern and the abundance and diversity of wildlife. Taxa studied include plants, lichens, insects and other invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Methods include theory development through spatial simulation modelling, and multi-landscape empirical studies to test predictions. Effects of habitat fragmentation, independent of habitat amount, on species abundance/occurrence and biodiversity are mainly neutral or positive. Impacts of road and traffic density are strongest on amphibians and reptiles. Increasing average crop field size has consistent, strong negative effects on biodiversity, across taxa and agricultural regions. Ongoing work is evaluating: the reliability of cross-scale extrapolation in habitat fragmentation research; the effectiveness of measures to mitigate road impacts on wildlife; and the role of dispersal ability, independent of fecundity, on species responses to habitat loss.