Shelley Spear

Shelley Spear is recently completed a Master’s degree with the Aldrige lab. Her research focused on evaluating habitat and environmental factors shaping alpine avian species’ abundance and occurrence and habitat-selection by white-tailed ptarmigan at two alpine areas in Colorado, Mt. Evans and Rocky Mountain National Park. Shelley is now a PhD student, working with Dr. Lise Aubry in the Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology Department at CSU.
Read Shelley’s dissertation here.

Dr. Jennifer Timmer

Dr. Jennifer Timmer is a recent graduate from the Aldrige lab. Her work examined how several sagebrush fauna respond to habitat structure within the current rangeland management framework. She is interested in spatial ecology and how landscape features at a local and large scale influence species’ demography. She is also interested in applying this information towards wildlife and range management. Jennifer Timmer completed her dissertation in 2017 and is now working with Bird Conservancy of the Rockies as a Conservation Delivery Biologist.
Read Jennifer’s dissertation here.

Dr. Adam Green

Adam Green conducted postdoctoral research at NREL, working with the Aldridge lab on better understanding bird populations and their conservation, and the impacts of oil and gas development on greater sage-grouse in Wyoming.  Adam now works as a Biometrician for the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, https://birdconservancy.org/.

Dr. Katie Langin

Katie Langin worked as a postdoctoral research fellow with the Aldridge lab on a project investigating adaptive evolution in white-tailed ptarmigan. Katie applied genomic techniques to quantify patterns of evolutionary divergence across the wide geographic range of the white-tailed ptarmigan, a high elevation species that is at risk due to climate change. Katie continues to collaborate with investigators at NREL in her work as a freelance writer and science communication consultant.

Gregory Wann, Ph.D.

Each year the Rocky Mountains Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (RM-CESU) recognizes a student for outstanding contribution to a RM-CESU project and the recipient of the 2016 award is Greg Wann, CSU Cooperator to the U.S. Geological Survey. Wann was recognized for a project entitled “Demography and Vulnerability of Grouse Populations,” that was initiated in 2014. His research directly helps managers within the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service to better understand population dynamics and potential management and conservation strategies. Greg finished her doctorate in 2017.
Read Greg’s dissertation here.

Sara Simonson

I worked as a project coordinator with the Aldridge Lab and the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory.  Since completing my MS degree at Colorado State University in butterfly conservation and ecology, I have worked on a variety of research projects on mapping plant and animal species distributions, and evaluation of methods for field data collection and data synthesis.  As a graduate student in the Watershed Science program, I am particularly interested in distributions of native and non-native plant species in space and time, and the patterns of natural and human disturbances affecting biodiversity in mountain snow systems.

Shawna Zimmerman, MS Student, Graduate Degree Program in Ecology

I was a master’s student working under Dr. Cameron Aldridge (CSU) and Dr. Sara Oyler-McCance (USGS). Originally hailing from the Pacific Northwest, I studied biology and botany at Boise State University in Idaho earning a bachelor’s degree. After graduation, I took a detour into the world of horticulture and crop development before finding my true career calling upon working a field job for an ecologist at the Bureau of Land Management in Boise, ID. I have since landed in Colorado and chosen to pursue an advanced degree in ecology. My research involves investigating the landscape genetic vulnerability of Gunnison sage grouse. I am now doing a post-doc at the USGS in Fort Collins.

Kristin Davis

I was a master’s student working with Dr. Cameron Aldridge (CSU), Dr. Susan Skagen (USGS), and Dr. David Augustine (USDA), studying grassland birds on Colorado’s shortgrass steppe. I graduated in 2009 from the College of William and Mary with a bachelor’s in biology and worked on field projects in Ecuador, Puerto Rico, California and Texas before starting at CSU in the fall of 2015. I am most interested in understanding drivers of avian species’ abundance and distribution, spatial ecology, citizen science and research with direct application to conservation and management. I am currently studying the integrative effects of weather, vegetation and topography, in the context of two experimental management regimes, on the abundance and distribution of six grassland bird species breeding on the Central Plains Experimental Range in NE Colorado.