The webinar presents the latest scientific insights about how animal species restoration and conservation can contribute to nature-based climate solutions via their underappreciated functional roles in protecting and enhancing carbon capture and storage across a broad range of global ecosystems.
Bio: Os Schmitz, is the Oastler Professor of Population and Community Ecology at the Yale School of the Environment. His work aims to make sense of nature’s complexity arising from the interdependencies and eco-evolutionary interactions among the diversity of carnivore, herbivore, plant and decomposer species within ecosystems. His research resolves the rules-of life that explain how interdependencies vary in time and space, and what they mean for ecosystem nutrient cycling, carbon storage, and resiliency to global change. His work informs environmental ethics and stewardship to enhance animal conservation to sustain ecosystems, their functions, and services they provide to humankind. At Yale, he teaches courses on the role of humans in nature and how humans can coexist harmoniously with nature. He currently provides scientific support to the Global Rewilding Alliance’s effort link animal conservation to carbon uptake and storage in ecosystems—called Animating the Carbon Cycle.
