SCBNA’s Collaboration with The Nature Record
To support the work The Nature Record, the Society for Conservation Biology North America (SCBNA) will be co-hosting a series of public engagement sessions to share the process and impact of The Nature Record’s knowledge assessment of nature.
The series will feature seven (7) sessions during the Winter and Spring of 2026. Two initial sessions will be offered to introduce the public to The Nature Record’s assessment – including its leadership – while also providing an overview of how such work is being undertaken by volunteer experts. The following five sessions will then focus on covering the four main thematic areas of the assessment and going through key findings for each area, while also inviting attendees to offer feedback for specific chapters in each area (directed by Chapter Lead authors and members of SCBNA’s Policy Committee).
Feedback from attendees will help shape the draft version of the assessment scheduled for final publication in late 2026.
Our Public Engagement Series
Join us for a set of introductory sessions led by The Nature Record’s Director and Deputy Director – Phil Levin and Tessa Francis – followed by a set of presentation and feedback sessions with authors of each chapter of the assessment. Attendees will be invited to learn about the information included in the assessment and provide comments, insights, and potential recommendations on how said information can be best shared with a broader audience.
Introductory Session
Recordings Below!
Two opportunities will be offered for attendees to receive an overview of the The Nature Record’s assessment.
Overview Session #1: An introduction to The Nature Record, its goals, and ongoing work.
In this webinar, we’ll introduce The Nature Record—the first-ever holistic assessment of U.S. lands, waters, biodiversity, and wildlife, and the benefits they provide to our health, economy, culture, and communities. We’ll explore why this assessment is needed now, what questions it seeks to answer, and how it is being built through a rigorous, collaborative process that brings together science, storytelling, and lived experience. We’ll also highlight ways for you to engage—whether offering feedback or contributing perspectives that help shape a living record of how nature shapes our lives, and how we shape what comes next.
Date: Monday, January 12, 2026
Time: 12 – 1:00 PM PST
Panelist(s): Phil Levin (Director), Tessa Francis (Deputy Director), Heather Tallis (Secretariat Chair), and Jane Lubchenco (Secretariat)
About Heather: Senior Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Center For Coastal Climate Resilience, is an interdisciplinary scientist who works at the intersection of nature, the economy and people’s lives. She co-founded The Nature Record and serves as the Secretariat Chair. Through previous government service and non-profit roles, she has advanced the science of ecosystem services, created measurement and design standards for biodiversity and the human dimensions of conservation, and infused nature into decisions with local communities, governments and the private sector in 20 countries. Dr. Tallis has served as an expert for assessments by the World Economic Forum and IPBES, and for global non-profit and research boards.
About Jane: Jane Lubchenco, Distinguished Professor and Valley Professor of Marine Biology at Oregon State University, is an ecologist with expertise in the interactions between the environment and human well-being. She co-founded the The Nature Record . Her government service includes leading the Climate and Environment team at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (2021-2014), the State Department’s first U.S. Science Envoy for the Ocean (2014-2016), Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator of NOAA (2009-2013), and the National Science Board (1996-2006). She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences among others and has received numerous awards including a MacArthur ‘genius’ Fellowship and 24 honorary doctorates (most recently from Oxford University).
Overview Session #2: An introduction to The Nature Record, its goals, and ongoing work.
In this webinar, we’ll introduce The Nature Record—the first-ever holistic assessment of U.S. lands, waters, biodiversity, and wildlife, and the benefits they provide to our health, economy, culture, and communities. We’ll explore why this assessment is needed now, what questions it seeks to answer, and how it is being built through a rigorous, collaborative process that brings together science, storytelling, and lived experience. We’ll also highlight ways for you to engage—whether offering feedback or contributing perspectives that help shape a living record of how nature shapes our lives, and how we shape what comes next.
Date: Wednesday January 28, 2026
Time: 12 – 1:00 PM PST
Panelist(s): Phil Levin (Director), Tessa Francis (Deputy Director), and Jane Lubchenco (Secretariat)
About Jane: Jane Lubchenco, Distinguished Professor and Valley Professor of Marine Biology at Oregon State University, is an ecologist with expertise in the interactions between the environment and human well-being. She co-founded the The Nature Record . Her government service includes leading the Climate and Environment team at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (2021-2014), the State Department’s first U.S. Science Envoy for the Ocean (2014-2016), Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator of NOAA (2009-2013), and the National Science Board (1996-2006). She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences among others and has received numerous awards including a MacArthur ‘genius’ Fellowship and 24 honorary doctorates (most recently from Oxford University).
Feedback Sessions
Recordings Below!
Thematic area #1 - How to assess nature
Date: March 4, 2026
Time: 12 – 1:00 PM PST
Chapters Covered:
1) Frameworks and Approaches to Assessing Nature: Authors will describe the suite of frameworks and approaches used within the chapters of The Nature Record to assess the status and trends of US lands, waters, biodiversity, and wildlife, as well as the benefits they provide for the country’s economy, health, culture, security, and climate. This methodology draws on the history, effective practices, and applications of nature assessments in the US and around the world, and is designed to incorporate multiple dimensions of environmental equity and justice. Nature Record authors also identify opportunities for the US to advance national-scale assessments in the future.
Panelist(s):
Katie Arkema | University of Washington
Katie Arkema’s research focuses on the effects of global change on coupled human-natural systems. She is particularly interested in the development of innovative solutions to support the energy and resilience needs of coastal communities. Katie frequently partners with leaders of countries, communities, and a variety of organizations to explore the ways in which ecosystems benefit society and to understand how decisions made by key actors and institutions influence ecological dynamics and human well-being. Katie is leveraging her experience with ecosystem services to foster integrated, participatory, and equitable approaches to designing and implementing renewable energy technology. Previously, Katie was lead scientist at the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University. There she led an interdisciplinary team of scientists in modeling the role of coastal ecosystems for protecting vulnerable communities from sea level rise and storms, while providing other benefits such as nursery habitat for fisheries, tourism opportunities, and carbon storage and sequestration. Katie’s research has been published in Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). Her work has informed coastal resilience planning, sustainable development, climate adaptation, and ecosystem restoration in the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean. In 2012 Katie was selected as a Nexus Fulbright Fellow. She holds a PhD in Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a BA in ecology with a minor in Latin American studies from Princeton University.
Thematic area #2 - What is going on with/what is happening to nature?
Date: March 18, 2026
Time: 12 – 2:00 PM PST
Chapters Covered:
1) Inland Water Ecosystems of the U.S.: Authors will describe the status, trends, and projections for inland waters (fresh and saline) of the contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. Inland waters, a vast circulatory system of springs, streams, rivers, wetlands, ponds, lakes, groundwaters and aquifers, have been overdrawn, polluted, fragmented, and subjected to extinction of native species and invasion by non-native species. These threats will worsen with hydroclimatic change and intensifying human pressures, making clean freshwater the most limiting resource for social–ecological systems in the US. Inland water ecosystems can partially heal if released or protected from these four harms, but because of current and future uncertainties, long-term monitoring programs to evaluate success and inform management or stewardship are vital. Restoration guided by science can recover valued ecological functions and populations of native species, demonstrating the resilience of these ecosystems when ‘living space’ is restored to nature.
2) Terrestrial Ecosystems of the U.S.: Terrestrial ecosystems in the US include forests, grasslands, shrublands, deserts, and tundra, all of which provide places for people to enjoy, inhabit, steward and use. Authors will describe how terrestrial ecosystems have been altered by human activities, either through land-cover and land-use change or some form of ecosystem degradation or restoration. Land conversion for forestry, agriculture, and urbanization benefits people in critical ways, yet diminishes the resources needed for the existence of plant, wildlife, and microbe species, causing declines in species abundances and ecosystem function. Terrestrial habitats and species are stressed by changes in fire regimes, chemical pollutants, disease, invasive species, overharvest of species, and climate change. Ecosystem conservation and restoration efforts that aim to reduce the negative impacts of land conversion and ecosystem degradation are most effective when they focus on landscapes with the ecological and cultural characteristics most essential for sustaining life and adaptation through change. In addition, there is growing recognition that working landscapes, such as rangelands, agricultural areas, and urban greenspaces play a critical role in conserving biodiversity and promoting human well-being when managed well.
3) Drivers of Change: Nature has been impacted and shaped by complex biospheric forces since its earliest existence, but the greatest proportion of nature change over the last centuries results from human activities. These anthropogenic drivers—including habitat loss and degradation, pollution, invasive species, land use, overharvesting, and climate change—are tightly connected to trends in human population expansion, migration, and resource extraction. The negative impacts of these forces may be mitigated by prioritizing values that support and improve nature, and that sustain its long-term benefits to humanity. Importantly, anthropogenic drivers of change in nature are rooted in the values and decisions made by those in power and by other social influences. Marginalized communities may have different relationships with, and values about, nature, but are often the most impacted by the effects of changes made by others. Further, sustainability and policy efforts are significantly influenced by inclusive versus non-inclusive local, national, and global governance structures.
4) Marine Ecosystems in the U.S.: Authors will describe how marine ecosystems in the U.S. have undergone substantial and long-lasting change driven by centuries of exploitation and, more recently, by accelerating climate impacts. Many marine species have declined steeply in abundance and body size. Marine habitats are degraded and reduced in extent, with dramatic declines in wetlands, estuaries, oyster reefs, and coral reefs. Today, human activities, including harvesting, coastal development, and pollution, as well as climate change, continue to degrade ecosystems. Halting and reversing this trajectory of decline is important because people in the US depend on marine species and ecosystems for economic, cultural, nutritional, human health, climate resilience, and security benefits. There have been promising improvements in marine ecosystems, through effective management, conservation, and restoration. Nevertheless, major challenges persist, including species and habitat declines, knowledge gaps, and emerging climate impacts. Science-based management, protection, and restoration efforts could help sustain the US ocean’s bounty.
Panelist(s):
Mary Power | University of California, Berkeley
Mary Power is Professor Emeriti in the Department of Integrative Biology and Faculty Manager of the Angelo Coast Range Reserve. She studies food webs, primarily algal-based river food webs and their linkages to upland and estuarine ecosystems. She and her collaborators use field experiments and long-term, place-based research to investigate 1) how traits and interactions of organisms, from fishing birds and fish to algae and microbes, determine ecosystem states; and 2) why states change under different environmental regimes. Their primary field site is the South Fork Eel River, in and around the Angelo Coast Range Reserve in Mendocino Co., CA. At Angelo, they have studied how hydroclimatic variation and changes in light or nutrient-limited productivity and in web membership affect structure and dynamics of food webs, as well as the performances and interactions of species within them. Presently (2024- ) they are focusing three alternative states of algal-based food webs that develop during the biologically productive summer low flow season, depending on flows during that summer and high flows during the preceding winter.
Sharon Collinge | Arizona Institute of Resilience, University of Arizona
Sharon Collinge directs the Arizona Institute for Resilience at the University of Arizona, which is an interdisciplinary institute housing 15 centers and programs focused on developing solutions to promote environmental and societal resilience in response to environmental change. Dr. Collinge is a landscape ecologist whose interdisciplinary research focuses on the consequences of environmental change for species and ecosystems. Her expertise in human-environment interactions includes the impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation on wildlife disease dynamics, ecological restoration of riparian woodlands and ephemeral wetlands, and population declines of species due to land conversion. Dr. Collinge formerly served as Professor and Chair of the Environmental Studies Department at the University of Colorado (2012-2015), Chief Scientist and Observatory Director for the NSF-funded National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) (2018-2019), Executive Director of the Earth Leadership Program (2020-2022), and Vice President for Public Affairs (2011-2014) and President (2021-2024) of the Ecological Society of America.
Danielle Ignace | University of Minnesota
Danielle Ignace is an Associate Professor in the Department of Forest Resources at the University of Minnesota and a Research Associate at Harvard Forest. Dr. Ignace is an enrolled member of the Coeur d’Alene tribe and an ecophysiologist studying the impacts of climate change, fire, and introduced species on forest ecosystem health and Indigenous communities in the United States and Canada. She currently serves as Chair of the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Section of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), Chair of the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee for the American Society of Plant Biologists, and is an Associate Editor for the journal Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. Furthering her commitment to building community partnerships, she serves on advisory committees for the BC Parks Foundation and the Silviculture Innovation Program. Dr. Ignace was recently selected as an Excellence in Ecology Scholar by ESA and chapter lead for the first-ever U.S. National Nature Assessment. Fostering unique and transdisciplinary collaborations to understand and communicate pressing global change problems is the hallmark of her research, teaching, YouTube channel, and ArtSci projects.
Maureen Kearney | Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes, Arizona State University
Maureen Kearney is a Senior Research Scientist at ASU’s Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes in Washington, DC. Dr. Kearney’s research and academic background is in biodiversity science, systematics, environmental biology, and evolutionary biology. Ongoing research programs focus on theoretical phylogenetics and evolutionary biology, the role of evolution in the resilience and adaptive capacity of changing natural systems, and in biodiversity dynamics. She has also worked in science policy, interdisciplinary program development, and research funding for environmental biology at the National Science Foundation, and in science policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Through all these areas, she has intentionally focused on inclusive team science and enhancing links between science, society, and evidence-based public policy.
Sarah Lester | Florida State University
Sarah is an associate professor at Florida State University (FSU). Her research interests include marine conservation and protected areas, natural resource management and policy, marine spatial planning and ocean zoning, sustainable seafood, fisheries management, marine ecosystem restoration, and biogeography. Ongoing research projects focus on studying climate vulnerability and resilience of coral reef ecosystems, understanding spatial and temporal patterns of mariculture development globally and in the United States, the role of state policy in marine aquaculture development in the United States, the effectiveness of marine protected areas, developing spatial planning approaches to inform mariculture siting and ecosystem restoration, and designing ocean zoning and fisheries management around small island states, among others – she applies an interdisciplinary lens to all of these research topics. She received her PhD in marine ecology from the University of California Santa Barbara, and prior to coming to FSU, was the Research and Program Director of the Sustainable Fisheries Group at UCSB.
Thematic area #3 (PART 1) - Why does it matter? How do changes to nature manifest?
Date: April 1, 2026
Time: 12 – 1:30 PM PST
Chapters Covered:
1) Culture and Relationships with Nature: This chapter explores the relationships between culture and nature in the United States, with a focus on how experiences in and with nature meaningfully shape and fulfill peoples’ lives. Culture–nature relationships have changed dramatically over the course of US history through processes of Indigenous sovereignty, colonization, slavery, capitalism, immigration, conservation, co-management, and other large-scale phenomena. In addition, culture–nature relationships are associated with many meanings and values for many people, but these relationships, meanings, and values differ across diverse sociodemographics. Overall increases in some nature-based activities contribute to strengthened relationships with nature, but decreases in both exposure to nature overall and the quality of nature contribute to weakened relationships. Further, access to nature affects how relationships can develop, and leads to inequities in who can access nature, when, and for what purposes. Because attributes of nature and access intertwine to support relationships with nature, managers often face tensions between facilitating access to allow for meaningful activities and restricting access to limit damaging activities. Research and monitoring related to relationships with nature leave many gaps in available data; future data collection can help managers to account for diverse human-nature relationships and seek harmony between them.
2) Health & Well-Being: Nature benefits human health and well-being in numerous ways, both directly through nature contact and indirectly over larger spatial and temporal scales. Specific benefits of nature range from mental health to physical health outcomes, from social benefits to overall happiness and well-being. Authors will describe the benefits of nature contact, and how they vary across individuals and groups based on factors such as age, nature connectedness, and cultural and historical backgrounds. Equity considerations are therefore key, since some groups face limited access to nature, lower-quality natural amenities and nature-based programs, and other barriers, in some cases the result of longstanding inequities. Social and environmental trends are affecting how nature delivers health and well-being benefits, reflecting social developments such as more time indoors, less participation in activities such as scouting and hunting, and less nature connectedness, all of which can reduce nature’s health benefits. Other trends, such as increased loneliness and reduced social capital, may be buffered by nature contact. Last, there are evidence-based interventions that promote nature contact or protect nature, which can support the health benefits of nature.
3) Connection with Nature: People in the United States have held a wide variety of views regarding the relationship between people and nature. Whereas the original Indigenous populations of North America generally embraced a holistic view that saw humans as inseparable from the natural world, European settlers often viewed nature as a source of raw materials—lumber, minerals, meat and hides—to be exploited. The resulting damage to ecosystems, however, inspired new attitudes and social movements that saw nature as worth protecting—both as a source of benefits to humans and as valuable for its own sake. This diversity of ideas of how humans are connected to nature (or not) remains reflected in American society today. Authors will describe human connection with nature: how people view themselves as either separate and disconnected from nature, or as part of a reciprocal relationship with nature where both people and the natural world benefit. These relationships come in many forms and are shaped by people’s individual values and experiences, broader worldviews, cultural and religious backgrounds, and other factors. Because large-scale social shifts such as urbanization have reduced direct access to nature in daily life, more people now experience nature through direct activities such as walking or birdwatching or indirectly via technology. Interactions with nature strengthen feelings of connection, and greater connection with nature can inspire individual and collective action to protect nature.
Panelist(s):
Rachelle Gould | University of Vermont
Rachelle Gould, who leads the Ecocultural Values Workshop, is the Steven Rubenstein Professor for Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources (this is a 5-year, rotating endowed professorship, from 2025-2030). She is an inter- and transdisciplinary scholar whose work involves social science, the humanities, and a bit of ecology. Her research explores the relationship between people and ecosystems, with two foci: the values of nature (including cultural ecosystem services and relational values) and lifelong and life-wide environmental education and learning. Attention to equity and justice issues motivate and undergird this work (see our group’s Equity Commitment here). Community-based research is an important part of Rachelle’s approach, and her work involves multiple continents and scores of relationships with conservation practitioners, government officials, and local community members (see details on our Partners page). Rachelle holds interdisciplinary environmental degrees from Harvard (BA), Yale (MA), and Stanford (PhD).
Howard Frumkin | University of Washington
Howard Frumkin is professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the UW School of Public Health, where he served as dean from 2010-2016. After serving as dean, he led the “Our Planet, Our Health” initiative at the Wellcome Trust in London from 2018-2019, and served as senior vice president at Trust for Public Land from 2021-2024. Previously, he directed the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (NCEH/ATSDR) and served as special assistant to the CDC Director for Climate Change and Health, from 2005-2010. Dr. Frumkin was professor and chair of Environmental and Occupational Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and professor of medicine at Emory Medical School from 1990-2005. Dr. Frumkin is an internist, environmental and occupational medicine specialist and epidemiologist. His research interests include public health aspects of the built environment, climate change, energy policy and nature contact. He has served on the boards of the Bullitt Foundation, the Seattle Parks Foundation, the Washington Global Health Alliance, the American Public Health Association, the US Green Building Council, the Children and Nature Network, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, among others, on several NASEM and IOM committees, on the Steering Committee of the Planetary Health Alliance (Harvard University) and on advisory committees to the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (Harvard University), HERA (Health Environment Research Agenda for Europe, INSERM and ISGlobal), the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education (Columbia University), the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health (George Mason University), the European Centre for Environment and Human Health (University of Exeter), the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health and the Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium (University of Toronto).
Meena Balgopal | Colorado State University
Meena Balgopal is a discipline-based educational researcher and an insect ecologist. Her training is diverse and spans agro-ecology, insect ecology, and science education. For the past 20 years she has been studying the role that instructional strategies have on learners’ environmental (and scientific) literacy. Her research interests center on “writing to learn,” group work, and place-based curricula. Her research is conducted in both formal (school and college science classrooms) and informal (citizen science, community gardens) settings.
John Coley | Northeastern University
John Coley is a Professor of Psychology and Marine & Environmental Sciences at Northeastern University, and Director of the Conceptual Organization, Reasoning, and Education (CORE) Lab. He is interested in the basic cognitive processes underlying how people organize and use their knowledge of the world, how those processes develop and change over time, and how differences in culture and experience lead to differences in the organization and use of knowledge. He is committed to cross-disciplinary translational research, and to exploring the concrete consequences of conceptual organization and reasoning in areas like science education, social conflict, and ecological awareness. His recent work focuses on how conceptualization of natural systems, and humans’ place therein, impact environmentally relevant values, attitudes, and behaviors.
Thematic area #3 (PART 2) - Why does it matter? How do changes to nature manifest?
Date: April 15, 2026
Time: 12 – 1:30 PM PST
Chapters Covered:
1) Nature and the Economy: The economy both relies on and transforms nature. Nature powers the US economy, providing the energy, raw materials, and ecosystem services that industries depend on. Authors will describe which sectors are most directly reliant on nature—agriculture, forestry, fisheries, energy, and outdoor recreation— including their contributions to GDP and livelihoods. Nature also indirectly supports many other sectors, and natural capital delivers nonmarket benefits—clean air and water, recreation, and biodiversity—that hold genuine economic value. Economic activity has at the same time eroded natural capital in recent decades, owing to the longstanding treatment of environmental harms—such as pollution, deforestation, soil degradation—as externalities, with costs borne by society and ecosystems rather than by the businesses that generate them. These externalized burdens fall disproportionately on marginalized and economically disadvantaged communities. Many businesses are beginning to adopt nature-friendly practices, though these efforts remain limited in scope and uneven in their reach, constrained by structural barriers that prevent widespread adoption.
2) Risk, Resilience, and Safety: Authors will describe the role of nature in supporting the security of, and reducing risk to, individuals, communities, and the nation. Human security is inseparably tied to nature’s ability to reliably provide essential ecosystem benefits and services. Some of the critical benefits are tangible, such as food, water, energy, and safety, while others are less tangible, such as recreational and aesthetic experiences. Ecosystems also provide vital protective services. Features like forests, salt marshes, mangroves, and coral reefs provide critical protection against environmental disasters and provide a means for communities to adapt to a changing climate. Human activities have reshaped ecosystems in ways that have created risks and undermined resilience in the US. These transformations increase risks from floods, droughts, storms, wildfires, and heat waves while diminishing the ability of ecosystems and people to withstand and recover from disturbances and adapt. Conserving, restoring, and stewarding natural systems, and investments in nature-based solutions, provide vital paths to reduce growing risks from flooding, wildfire, heat, and other hazards in ways that support building lasting resilience in communities and ecosystems. As climate impacts and development pressures intensify, combining natural and built infrastructure provides a flexible and enduring path toward community safety, economic stability, and ecological health. Embracing nature can promote peacebuilding and stability, by building coalitions between federal, state, and local governments and private landowners to protect natural areas for the benefit of future use and to avoid encroachment against national security missions.
3) Nature and Climate Change: Earth is rapidly warming, largely as a result of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, and the US is warming faster than the global average. Nature is impacted by this warming, and at the same time it is also impacted by human land use, pollution, and invasive species. Authors will describe nature’s responses to human-caused warming, which are widespread at all levels, from changes in gene frequencies to the productivity of the global biome. Many of these responses serve to decrease environmental stresses and improve the ability of organisms to succeed. However, there are also many examples of limits to adaptation, constraints on range shifts, and novel interactions that degrade biodiversity or ecosystem functioning. Currently, nature provides an enormous benefit by sequestering more than half of annual human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, but the continuation of this sequestration depends on the health of the ocean, ecosystems on land, and efforts to limit warming. Nature-based solutions can support adaptation to climate change, and are some of the lowest-cost options for reducing emissions and removing existing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, while also supporting a wide range of co-benefits in environmental quality and rural livelihoods. Success in capitalizing on this potential will require continued research, ambitious deployment, and adaptive management based on learning from experience.
Panelist(s):
Rajat Panwar | Oregon State University
Rajat Panwar an interdisciplinary scholar. His research focuses on how businesses can help mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss while contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. His work employs both qualitative and quantitative social science methodologies. He serves as a lead author for the “Business and Biodiversity” assessment by the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and for the United States National Nature Assessment. He is the President-Elect of the International Association for Business and Society and the Program Chair for the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management.
Todd Bridges | University of Georgia
Dr. Todd Bridges is a Professor of Practice in resilient and sustainable systems in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia. Prior to joining UGA in 2023, Bridges served for 17 years as the U.S. Army’s Senior Research Scientist (ST) for Environmental Science, one of 40 Senior Research Scientists in the Department of the Army. Over his 30-year career with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bridges led >$250 million in research projects and programs in environmental science and engineering and sustainable infrastructure. Bridges founded the Corps’ Engineering with Nature® program (www.engineeringwithnature.org) in 2010, which includes a broad range of research, field-scale applications, multi-sector collaborations, and communication efforts to advance the development and application of Nature-based Solutions. Among his 100 publications, Bridges led a 5-year collaboration across the public and private sectors to develop and publish International Guidelines on Natural and Nature-Based Features for Flood Risk Management. Dr. Bridges received a Distinguished Presidential Rank Award from President Biden in 2021 for exceptional leadership, accomplishments, and service.
Chris Field | Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University
Chris Field is the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies. His research focuses on climate change solutions that work for everyone, now and in the future. Field’s ongoing projects emphasize improving the integrity of natural climate solutions, limiting impacts from coastal flooding and wildfires, and decreasing the risks from climate overshoot. Field has a long history of work on climate change assessments, including leadership roles in reports from the IPCC, the US National Academies, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His widely cited work has earned many recognitions, including the 2022 Japan Prize.
Thematic area #4 - What can we (all of us) do?
Date: April 29, 2026
Time: 12 – 1:30 PM PST
Chapters Covered:
1) Opportunities for Nature and People: Nature and people in the United States are connected. Actions that support nature can reduce risks, support local economies, and improve health and well-being. There is an opportunity to improve how place-based actions are carried out and the policy and governance approaches that help those efforts last, spread, and accumulate nationally. Place-based actions such as floodplain reconnection, wildlife crossing retrofits, and neighborhood green infrastructure are more reliable when affected people help shape decisions. We highlight three place-based practices that help these actions work well: coordinating across connected land and water, using decision-ready information, and building participatory partnerships with shared decision-making. These practices are easier to repeat when policies, incentives, and other levers across Tribal, state, and federal levels clarify responsibilities, pay for coordination and upkeep, and track outcomes and harms by place and population, including who benefits and who bears costs. Strategically repeating these practices helps local actions add up, while tracking results in standardized ways makes it easier to learn, correct problems early, and illuminate the broader national picture of how nature is faring.
2) Bright Spots in Nature: Bright spots in nature are places and processes that are in better condition than expected given the negative impacts of human activities. Although the damage to nature is widespread, these bright spots are numerous and occur in many regions and habitats throughout the US and its Territories. Here, we define and describe bright spots in nature and document the social, ecological and technological conditions that enable them. We also show how these examples of thriving nature benefit people, particularly when equity and inclusion are prioritized, and how these benefits can make bright spots brighter and more durable. Understanding how bright spots emerge, elucidating the role of enabling conditions in sustaining them, and evaluating the diverse and critical benefits they confer for people and non–human species can reveal ways to “brighten” places and processes across the country that may be currently dark. In this way, bright spots can serve as sources of inspiration for replication in other locations and contribute to scaling up, out and deep the processes that can enable more brightness across Earth systems.
Panelist(s): Timon McPhearson (NYU), Pat Soranno (MSU)
Pat Sorrano | Michigan State University
Patricia Soranno, Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at Michigan State University (MSU), is a macrosystems ecologist who studies freshwater systems and their connections to people and policy from regional to continental scales. She is a Senior Fellow for Research Infrastructure in MSU’s Office of Research and Innovation. Her government service includes leading the Division of Biological Infrastructure at the U.S. National Science Foundation (2019–2023), where she advanced national-scale research infrastructure, including open data tools and she helped to launch new programs to broaden participation in the biological sciences. She co-leads the LAGOS initiative, an open-access research platform that supports broad-scale environmental research, management, and decision-making. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and other organizations.
Timon McPhearson | New York University
Timon McPhearson is an ecologist whose teaching and research takes an interdisciplinary systems approach to advancing urban resilience, equity, and sustainability. He founded the Urban Systems Lab in 2015 to advance urban systems science. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences. He is the Co-Chair of the NYC Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) and a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His work earned the Ecological Society of America’s Sustainability Science Award twice as well as ESA’s Innovation in Sustainability Science Award. He was named an NYC Climate Hero and was awarded the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity for his work as a member of the IPCC. He has published over 250 scientific articles, book chapters, and reports and his books include Urban Planet (2018), Resilient Urban Futures (2021), and Nature-based Solutions for Cities (2023). He advises policymakers, governments, NGOs, and corporations on urban climate risk and resilience, has spoken to audiences at Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Cornell among other universities. His research is extensively covered including in The New York Times, The Guardian, Science Friday, NBC, PBS Newshour, Voice of America, New Yorker, and more.
The public comment period is now open!
Members of the public are invited to review the assessment and submit comments to help improve its clarity, accuracy, and usefulness.
- Comment period closes: May 31, 2026
- Submit comments: NatureRecord.org
Why public input matters:
Information is most meaningful when it is used. Public comments from the people we hope will use the assessment help identify gaps, clarify findings, and bring in local, practitioner, and everyday experience. All comments received are reviewed by the author team and inform revisions to the final report.
Who should participate?
Anyone with interest or experience related to the assessment topic is encouraged to comment, including practitioners, researchers, community members, students, organizations, and agencies. Technical expertise is not required.
Who is leading this effort?
Experts and practitioners guide the work of individual chapters, while a primary decision-making body – The Nature Record’s Secretariat – ensures the work remains rigorous, credible, and impactful. The initiative is also supported by a core group of staff that facilitates logistics and coordination efforts (see below).
Secretariat
