Functional Biodiversity and Climate Resilience
Integrate biology, economics, law, and communication to explore how ecological functions drive resilience to better inform policy, economic models, and public understanding.
Project Leads
Evon Hekkala, Professor and Chair, Department of Biological Sciences
Marc Conte, Associate Professor, Department of Economics
Adam Orford, Associate Professor of Law
Zoey Rosen, Assistant Professor of Science Communication
Project Description
Climate change is reshaping ecosystems in ways that directly influence biodiversity, economic stability, and human well-being. Yet current approaches to climate resilience often treat biodiversity simply as species richness, overlooking the fact that species differ dramatically in the ecological roles they perform. This project investigates how variation in species’ ecological functions contributes to ecosystem resilience and how these contributions can be better incorporated into economic models, legal frameworks, and public understanding.
The project builds on ongoing ecological and genomic research in the Tahoe Basin examining chipmunk species that differ in their roles dispersing mycorrhizal fungi essential for forest health, nutrient cycling, and disturbance recovery. Preliminary findings suggest that species contributing most strongly to these ecosystem functions may also be among the most vulnerable to environmental change, raising important questions about cascading effects on forest productivity, wildfire dynamics, and regional economies.
We are addressing these challenges via a transdisciplinary framework integrating Biological Sciences, Economics, Law, and Communication. Ecological and genetic data will be linked with economic analyses of ecosystem productivity and climate-related risk using spatial and causal inference approaches. Legal scholarship will evaluate how regulatory and benefit-cost frameworks account for ecological function, while communication research will examine how the public understands biodiversity’s role in climate resilience and societal well-being.
The project also establishes a scalable collaborative model for future research at Fordham University by connecting existing strengths in biodiversity science, sustainability, policy, and public engagement. Undergraduate researchers will participate in paired transdisciplinary teams, creating new opportunities for collaborative training at the intersection of science, society, and climate resilience.