Brett G. Dickson

Assistant Research Professor and co-Director, Lab of Landscape Ecology and Conservation Biology

Education

BS in Conservation Biology, San Jose State University, 1996
MS in Forestry (Wildlife Ecology emph.) Northern Arizona University, 2001
PhD in Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, 2006 

Contact

Office: Applied Research and Development Building (bldg #56), suite 220
Phone: 928-523-3592
E-mail: brett.dickson@nau.edu
Personal web page

Research interests

Brett Dickson's research and professional interests thread through a wide range of disciplines, including conservation biology and planning, wildlife and landscape ecology, and contemporary statistical modeling and inferential approaches. Much of his work is focused on understanding and estimating animal-habitat relationships, landscape connectivity, the impacts of land use and climate change, or disturbance processes, such as fire and non-native species invasion, in forested and arid ecosystems across North America. As co-Director of the Lab of Landscape Ecology and Conservation Biology at NAU, he seeks to integrate cutting-edge technical approaches to research with graduate student and post-doctoral training, as well as internships and other educational experiences, which are grounded in applied conservation. Dickson is also president of and chief scientist for Conservation Science Partners, Inc., a non-profit institution established to meet the research and analytic needs of conservation-oriented projects and professionals across multiple sectors of society. Typically, his projects, research staff, and students collectively bridge the efforts of these organizations.

Publications

Dickson, B. G., S. E. Sesnie, E. Fleishman, and D. S. Dobkin. In press. Identification of habitat and assessment of habitat quality for conservation of terrestrial animals. Invited chapter in L. Craighead and C. Convis, eds., Conservation planning: Shaping the future. Esri Press, Redlands, CA, USA.

Bradley, B. B., A. D. Olsson, B. G. Dickson, S. E. Sesnie, O. Wang, L. Pelech, and L. Zachmann. 2012. Species detection vs. habitat suitability: Are we biasing habitat suitability models with remotely sensed data? Ecological Modelling 244:57-64.

Kalies, E. L., B. G. Dickson, C. L. Chambers, and W. W. Covington. 2012. Restoration treatments increase occupancy of the small mammal community in ponderosa pine forests, northern Arizona, USA. Ecological Applications 22:204-217.

Sesnie, S. E., B. G. Dickson, S. Rosenstock, and J. M. Rundall. 2012. A comparison of Landsat TM and MODIS vegetation indices for estimating forage phenology in desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni) habitat in the Sonoran Desert, USA. International Journal of Remote Sensing 33:276-286.

Bakker, V. J., J. K. Baum, J. F. Brodie, B. G. Dickson, H. K. Gibbs, O. P. Jensen, P. B. McIntyre, and A. K. Solomon. 2010. The changing landscape of conservation science funding in the United States. Conservation Letters 3:435-444.

Hurteau, S. R., T. D. Sisk, B. G. Dickson, and W. M. Block. 2010. Variability in nest success, occupancy, and home range size of western bluebirds after forest treatments. Forest Science 56:131-138.

Buckland, S. T., R. E. Russell, B. G. Dickson, V. Saab, and W. Block. 2009. Analyzing designed experiments in distance sampling. Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics 14:432-442.

Dickson, B. G., E. Fleishman, D. S. Dobkin, and S. R. Hurteau. 2009. Relationship between avifaunal occupancy and riparian vegetation in the central Great Basin (Nevada, U.S.A.). Invited. Restoration Ecology 17:722-730.

Dickson, B. G., B. R. Noon, C. H. Flather, S. Jentsch, and W. M. Block. 2009. Quantifying the multi-scale response of avifauna to prescribed fire experiments in the southwest United States. Ecological Applications 19:608-621.

McRae, B. H., B. G. Dickson, T. H. Keitt, and V. B. Shah. 2008. Using circuit theory to model connectivity in ecology, evolution, and conservation. Ecology 89:2712-2724.

Dickson, B. G., and P. Beier. 2007. Quantifying the influence of topographic position on cougar (Puma concolor) movement in southern California, USA. Journal of Zoology 271:270-277.