Center for Humans and Nature

Brooke Hecht, Ph.D.

President

Brooke received her Ph.D. in ecosystem ecology from Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where her work addressed how human land use can alter ecosystem resilience. Her interests are as wide-ranging as the Center’s, ranging from ecology, evolutionary biology, psychology and theology to philosophy, history, ethics, and economics.  Brooke earned her B.A. in biology from Dartmouth College, where her focus was on plant molecular genetics. She received her Master of Science degree at the University of Melbourne. In Australia, her research assessed the adequacy of buffer zones protecting rainforests adjacent to logged eucalyptus forests. This work was the starting point for her interest in ecological edges and threshold zones.

Brooke continued her research on ecological thresholds during her Ph.D. work at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The School’s interdisciplinary approach broadened Brooke’s earlier focus on natural science to more explicitly consider the feedback loops between human activities and the ecosphere. Her research explored how human and natural stressors affect ecosystem resilience in boreal forest threshold zones. Her field work took her to Iceland, where she was also a Fulbright Fellow.

Before joining the Center in 2005, Brooke was an Exchange Scholar at Harvard University.