Joseph D. Cornell
User Profile
Joseph D. Cornell currently is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Idaho State University where he is the Ecologist/Applied Mathematician for the Sanak Island Biocomplexity Project. Joseph studied with Dr. Charles Hall at the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF) in Syracuse, New York where he received his PhD in Systems Ecology in 2003. A broadly-trained ecologist, Joseph has done field work in Puerto Rico, New York, West Virginia, Montana, Colorado, and most recently in 2006, on Sanak Island, Alaska, in the Aleutian Islands. Joseph has training and experience in the ecology and identification of Arachnids, Lepidopterans, Bryophytes, Fungi, and Lichens. In addition to his training in organismal biology and field ecology, Joseph has experience in Computer Simulation Modeling, Spatial Modeling of Land-Use Change, and Mathematical Ecology. The breadth of Joseph's graduate training is reflected in his teaching experience at SUNY ESF where as a Visiting Assistant Professor he taught courses in Ecosystems Ecology, the History of Evolutionary Thought, Introduction to Computer Programming, and Computer Methods for Scientists and Engineers. Joseph's research includes work on tropical forestry and land-use change, agroforestry, pest biology, spatial modeling, global change biology, paleoclimate, and the global carbon cycle. As part of his PhD dissertation, Joseph used GIS and Spatial Modeling techniques to simulate the historical distribution of tropical forests for all of Central America. The major result of this work is a highly-detailed series of digital maps showing the simulated distribution of forest cover in ten-year intervals from 1880 to 2000. To create this series of maps, Joseph used a version of GEOMOD, a general model of land-use change, which he helped develop at SUNY ESF and which is now a module in the IDRISI GIS software package. Joseph's current work on "biocomplexity" concerns the relationship between long-term Aleut occupation and the ecology of the flora and fauna of the Aleutian Islands over the past 5000 years.
