Conservation Planning

Dr. Paul Elsen

Dr. Paul Elsen is Director of Conservation Planning at WCS. He has over 15 years of experience in conducting scientific research as an ecologist, conservation biologist, and spatial analyst focusing on understanding and addressing the impacts of climate and land use change on the environment. He combines large geospatial datasets with field observations, climate projections, and biodiversity databases and uses remote sensing and statistical models to answer research questions and provide decision support to stakeholders at landscape, national, and global scales. His recent work has focused particularly on providing technical and analytical support to guide decision-making around interventions to increase resilience and adaptive capacity of ecosystems and vulnerable people. Prior to joining WCS, he held postdoctoral positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UC Berkeley, and Princeton University, and received a PhD from Princeton and a BA from UC Berkeley. He has published and co-authored more than 30 peer-reviewed scientific articles in journals including Science, Nature Climate Change, Nature Communications, Nature Ecology and Evolution, Science Advances, and PNAS.