Titles

• Affiliate Global Futures Scholar, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory
• Emeritus Professor, School of Life Sciences, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Biography

Jeffrey Klopatek is Emeritus Professor of Ecology and Environmental Science in the School of Life Sciences. He was previously a Research Ecologist in the Environmental Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he also taught at the University of Tennessee. He is a certified Senior Ecologist by the Ecological Society of America (ESA) and a past two-time Chair of ESA's Board of Professional Certification. Among his honors was his award as a Senior Fulbright Scholar. Both his teaching and research activities focus on ecosystem and landscape ecology and the methods needed to address ecological topics at theses scales. He has conducted research world-wide ranging from the deserts of Namibia to the glaciers of Antarctica. He and his students have worked on a wide scale of projects, ranging from microbial controls on decomposition to ecosystem carbon flux to the analysis of satellite images for determining landscape changes. Research has taken place in a myriad of ecosystems: wetlands, extreme deserts, old-growth temperate rain forests, deciduous forests, shrublands, urban and agricultural systems. His research emphasis is currently divided in two primary areas: 1) the prediction of potential global change effects on ecosystems and their below- and aboveground structures and processes, and 2) the biogeochemistry of ecosystems. He has been a visiting scientist at EPA working on the development of ecological indicators. He has extensive consulting experience, most in wetland ecology and ecosystems but also including a myriad of topics from siting of energy facilities to food sustainability. His past experiences include being elected chairman of a planning and zoning commission to a nuclear missile battery commander.

Education

• PhD, University of Oklahoma

Expertise

• botany
• Responsible Consumption and Production
• Good Health and Well-Being
• Zero Hunger
• urban ecology
• terrestrial ecology
• land use and land cover
• landscape studies
• desertification
• deforestation
• biogeochemistry
• natural resource management
• agriculture
• geochemistry
• food policy
• fire ecology
• ecosystem services
• climate change and adaptation
• landscape ecology
• ecosystems