James S. Clark

Bio and Research:

James S. Clark is H.L. Blomquist Professor of the Nicholas School of the Environment, Professor of Biology, and Professor of Statistics and Decision Science.

Clark’s research focuses on how global change affects forests. Current projects explore consequences of climate, CO2, and disturbance. His lab is using long-term experiments and monitoring studies to determine disturbance and climate controls on the dynamics of 20th century forests in combination with extensive modeling to forecast ecosystem change. Clark has authored over 120 refereed scientific articles and published four books, including Models for Ecological Data (Princeton, 2007), Models for Ecological Data in R (Princeton, 2007), Hierarchical Models of the Environment (Oxford, 2006), and Sediment Records of Biomass Burning and Global Change (Springer, 1997).

Clark received a B.S. from the North Carolina State University in Entomology (1979), a M.S. from the University of Massachusetts in Forestry and Wildlife (1984), and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in Ecology (1988). Between his M.S. and Ph.D., he studied one year at the University of Göttingen under a Fulbright-DAAD fellowship. At Duke University, Clark teaches Biodiversity Science and Applications and Ecological Models & Data. He has served as Director for the Center on Global Change, and Director of Graduate Studies for the University Program in Ecology.

Clark is recipient of ESA's William Skinner Cooper Award (1988), for his research on barrier beach dynamics, and George Mercer Award (1991), for studies of climate change and fire. For excellence in teaching and research, he was one of 15 scientists recognized by President Clinton with the National Science Foundation’s five-yr Presidential Faculty Fellow Award (1994). In 1998 he was named an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, on behalf of the Ecological Society of America. He is the 2004 Distinguished Alumnus from Natural Resources Conservation, University of Massachusetts. In 2005, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Clark has testified before congress on behalf of the Ecological Society of America and the NSF budget. He served on editorial boards for Ecology and Ecological Monographs (1996 -1999), Annual Reviews of Ecology and Systematics (1998 - 2003), Global Change Biology (1994 - ), Ecosystems (2003 - ), and Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2006-) and on NSF Advisory panels for Ecology (1992 - 1997), Earth System History (1994), and LTER (2000). He chaired ESA's Mercer Award Committee and was Vice President for Science (1999 - 2004). He served on the Science Advisory Board of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.