Institute at Brown for Environment and Society

Dr. Carson Hedberg is a community ecologist and paleobiologist whose research seeks to bridge insights from the fossil record to modern conservation applications. Her doctoral research at the University of New Mexico investigated the relationship between large mammal diversity and ecosystem function from local to global scales. She used both quantitative and field-based methods to explore how millennia of anthropogenically mediated species loss and introductions have influenced ecological function and community structure over time. Her research at Brown University with Dr. Tyler Kartzinel will focus on the ecology and conservation of caribou, a culturally and ecologically important species threatened by modern climate change. Working with an international research team, they will apply cutting edge genetic methods to investigate caribou dietary ecology across the Holocene to better predict their response to ongoing climate warming and loss of polar ice features. This work is supported by a National Science Foundation Polar Programs Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded to Dr. Hedberg in 2024.