Terradapt

Andrew Shirk, Executive Director and co-founder of TerrAdapt is also the lead modeler and software developer on our team. Andrew is an ecologist with expertise in remote sensing, ecological modeling, and large landscape conservation planning. He works with partners to co-develop tools to inform their adaptive management of species and their habitats at risk from our rapidly changing climate and expanding human footprint. 

Carly Vynne, Director of Global Outreach and a co-founder of TerrAdapt brings expertise in regional and global conservation planning to help guide our team’s approach to integrating dynamic data to serve multiple partners. Carly’s principal motivation is to help ensure that natural places and wild species can thrive together with humanity now and into the future – and she strongly believes that TerrAdapt can play a major role in making this happen. As the Biodiversity and Climate Team Lead at RESOLVE, Carly is a key contributor to the Global Deal for Nature and, Global Safety Net develop the Global Deal for Nature, Global Safety Net, and is working on a number of rewilding initiatives across the western US and Alaska. Carly holds a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Policy from Middlebury College (VT-USA) and a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Washington, Seattle.

Greg Kehm, Senior Advisor and a co-founder of TerrAdapt, contributes decades of applied experience in large landscape planning and the application of science and Indigenous Knowledge into land decision-making processes. He has a long history working in this region as an advisor to governments, First Nations, and civil society organizations, building guardian and monitoring programs, co-developing land relationship plans, and identifying ecological climate refugia. Greg supports TerrAdapt community engagement, adaptive management planning, and training. He lives in the unceded ancestral territory of the Musquem, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Jesse Anderson is a data scientist and backend engineer for TerrAdapt. With a background in ecology as well as computer science, he brings a conservation focus and scientific eye to the technical aspects of much of his work. With experience in and among the academic, non-profit, governmental, and for-profit sectors, Jesse excels at working with diverse partners and developing scientific products for a variety of audiences. He is currently helping to build and maintain the computational and statistical backend to support the TerrAdapt website as well as contributing to modeling efforts including animal connectivity. 

Dr. Sonia A. Hall is passionate about helping develop science that directly informs decisions to improve management at landscape scales. She has 18 years experience working in Washington State and beyond, on projects to prioritize restoration in fire prone forests, identify opportunities for conserving habitat connectivity, and incorporating wildlife needs into sustainable grazing efforts in Patagonia (Argentina) and the western U.S. Sonia has coordinated multiple collaborative planning processes, including the Columbia Plateau connectivity analysis, spatial and aspatial conservation planning for the Arid Lands Initiative, and co-development of the Cascadia Partner Forum’s Cascadia Blueprint. As a project manager for TerrAdapt, she focuses on engaging stakeholders in co-production of applied science analyses and tools, and developing outreach products to share the resulting tools and insights with natural resource managers and decision-makers. TerrAdapt’s marrying of co-production with the power of dynamic data is an exciting way to bring her expertise to bear on large landscape conservation efforts in Washington and across the world. Sonia received her bachelor’s degree in Agronomy from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and her PhD in ecology from Colorado State University.

Nathan Hahn supports technical and community engagement work for TerrAdapt, including adaptive management planning, species and habitat modeling, and training. Nathan is a conservation biologist with expertise in spatial ecology and species modeling in large landscapes. His primary interests lay in determining how landscape, human, and climate impact species populations, and translating to develop solutions to biodiversity conservation issues. Nathan holds a PhD in ecology from Colorado State University and has worked in systems in the US, India, Kenya, Tanzania, and Indonesia.

Jessica Schafer is a project manager with TerrAdapt. Jessica is a conservation biologist with expertise in natural resource and environmental policy and large landscape connectivity planning. Jessica has worked in the Pacific region for 15 years primarily with NGOs and federal and state agencies focused on conservation and restoration work. She holds a B.S. in Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology from the University of California, Davis and a J.D. with a certificate in Natural Resource and Environmental Law from Lewis and Clark Law School.   

Tom Campbell, Board Chair, has been a funder of climate change and biodiversity efforts over the past 15 years and provides TerrAdapt organizational and strategic leadership. Tom has long been involved in conservation and land-use decisions and was a principal architect of Washington State’s Growth Management Act. He has served on the Forest Practices Board and was active in Spotted Owl and Marbled Murrelet decisions. Tom currently is the treasurer of the Charlotte Martin Foundation funding conservation work in the five Northwest states including Alaska.

Jen Watkins is the Science, Planning, and Monitoring Acting Division Manager - Forest Health and Resiliency Division, Washington State Department of Natural Resources. Jen has worked for many years on forest restoration, natural resource climate resiliency planning, and large landscape connectivity. Jen sparks the collaborations required to work across boundaries and borders including facilitating the annual Cascadia Connects conference. She is a founding member of the Cascadia Partner Forum and lives in Seattle, Washington.

Tanya Birch leads Google Earth Outreach’s Nature Conservation efforts, advancing science-based solutions to the conservation of biodiversity and habitats with leading organizations by applying Google's geospatial, AI & machine learning technologies. Tanya leads Google's involvement in TerrAdapt, a cloud platform to catalyze data-driven decision-making to protect wildlife and habitats in a changing climate.

Dave Thau, Special Advisor to the Board, began as an advisor to TerrAdapt while he worked at Google. Since then he has continued as an advisor and worked to apply TerrAdapt to new regions in his role at the World Wildlife Fund where he is the Global Data and Technology Lead Scientist. Dave’s work in the fields of data management, sustainability, artificial intelligence, and remote sensing has appeared in journals like Science, Nature, Remote Sensing of Environment, Sustainability, and Ecological Informatics.