Dr. Julia Baum

Dr. Julia Baum
Position
ProfessorBiology
Contact
Office: PCH 116bbaum@uvic.ca250-858-9349website
Area of expertise

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | Environmental Biology | Marine Science

Areas of research focus

Julia Baum studies the resilience of marine ecosystems in the face of human disturbance. Her research focuses on their ecology and conservation, investigating how disruptions such as climate change are altering these ecosystems, and if and how they'll recover.

Research in the Baum Lab is motivated by a fundamental desire to understand how human impacts are changing our oceans. We are currently investigating how climate change and other anthropogenic stressors are altering the diversity, structure, and resilience of marine ecosystems.

We focus primarily on tropical coral reefs, and do so using a suite of approaches including statistical models of large observational data sets, field observations and experiments, molecular analyses and bioinformatics, stable isotope analyses, interviews, and meta-analyses. Our research spans across broad temporal and spatial scales, incorporates principles from population, community and ecosystem ecology, conservation science, and fisheries science and is highly collaborative.

We are committed to open science, enhancing equity in science, and outreach to the public and policy-makers. Our overarching goal is to make scientific discoveries that advance understanding of oceanic ecosystems, and inform and inspire effective solutions for their conservation.

Baum Lab | @BaumLab

Magel, J.M.T., J.H.R. Burns, R.D. Gates and J.K. Baum. 2018. Effects of bleaching-associated mass coral mortality on reef structural complexity across a gradient of local disturbance. Scientific Reports.

Claar, D.C., L. Szostek, J.M. McDevitt-Irwin, J.J. Schanze and J.K. Baum. 2018. Global patterns and impacts of El Niño events on coral reefs: A meta-analysis. PLoS ONE 13(2): e0190957; doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190957.

Iacarella, J., E. Adamczyk, D. Bowen, L. Chalifour, A. Eger, W. Heath, S. Helms, M. Hessing-Lewis, B.P.V. Hunt, A. MacInnis, M. O'Connor, C.L.K. Robinson, J. Yakimishyn and J.K. Baum. 2018. Anthropogenic disturbance homogenizes seagrass fish communities. Online early: Global Change Biology 1-15 Supp Mat 1, 2.

Baum, J.K. and T.G. Martin. 2018. It is time to overcome unconscious bias in ecology. Nature Ecology and Evolution 2: 201.

Hughes, T.P., K.D. Anderson, S.R. Connolly, S.F. Heron, J.T. Kerry, J.M. Lough, A.H. Baird, J.K. Baum, M.L. Berumen, T.C. Bridge, D.C. Claar, C.M. Eakin, J.R. Gilmour, N.A.J. Graham, H. Harrison, J-P.A. Hobbs, A.S. Hoey, M. Hoogenboom, R.J. Lowe, M.T. McCulloch, J.M. Pandolfi, M. Pratchett, V. Schoepf, G. Torda and S.K. Wilson. 2018. Spatial and temporal patterns of mass bleaching of corals in the Anthropocene. Science 359(6371): 80-83.

Yeager, L.A., M.C.M. Deith, J.M. McPherson, I.D. William and J.K. Baum. 2017. Scale-dependence of environmental controls on the functional diversity of coral reef fish communities. Global Ecology and Biogeography 26: 1177-1189.

Yeager, L.A., P. Marchand, D.A. Gill, J.K. Baum and J.M. McPherson. 2017. Marine socio-environmental covariates: Queryable global layers of environmental and anthropogenic variables for marine ecosystem studies. Ecology 98(7):1976.

Robinson, J.P.W., I.D. Williams, A.M. Edwards, J. McPherson, L. Yeager, L. Vigliola, R.E. Brainard and J.K. Baum. 2017. Fishing degrades size structure of coral reef fish communities. Global Change Biology 23(3): 1009-1022.

Robinson, J.P.W. and J.K. Baum. 2016. Trophic roles determine coral reef fish community size structure. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 73(4): 496-505.

White, E.R., M.C. Myers, J. Mills Flemming and J.K. Baum. 2015. Shifting elasmobranch community assemblage at Cocos Island - an isolated marine protected area. Conservation Biology 29(4): 1186-1197.