Dr. Julia Klein

Biography

Julia Klein is a Professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science & Sustainability and a Research Scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University, traditional homelands of the Ute, Arapahoe and Cheyenne nations.   She received a B.A. in Political Science from Cornell University and an M.S. and PhD in Ecosystem Science from the University of California at Berkeley.  Upon receiving her doctorate, she was awarded a NOAA Postdoctoral Climate and Global Change Fellowship.  The broad goals of Dr. Klein’s research are to understand how interacting global changes affect pastoral and mountain ecosystems and livelihoods; to detect the patterns and underlying mechanisms driving these responses and feedbacks; and to identify actions and pathways towards sustainable futures.  Her projects typically combine diverse methods, including experimental manipulations, landscape analysis, local ecological knowledge and modeling.  The main geographic focus of her research has been the eastern and central alpine grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau; however, she also works on the shortgrass steppe and alpine region of Colorado and conducts global syntheses of grassland, arctic/alpine and mountain systems worldwide.  Dr. Klein leads the U.S.-based Mountain Sentinels Collaborative Network, an international network which seeks to catalyze innovative solutions and actions towards global mountain sustainability through equitable collaboration, Western science, indigenous ways of knowing, and actions with diverse mountain stakeholders.  She is also working on a documentary film focused on a small and dedicated group of people in the Peruvian Andes grappling with the severe and imminent effects of climate change.