

Toni Lyn Morelli
Research Interests
After her Ph.D., Toni Lyn Morelli obtained a National Science Foundation Bioinformatics Postdoctoral Fellowship, collaborating with Steve Beissinger and Craig Moritz on an extension of the Grinnell Resurvey Project; she continues these collaborations examining climate refugia under funding she obtained from the California Landscape Conservation Cooperative. She has also worked for the U.S. Forest Service, both as a research ecologist at the Pacific Southwest Research Station and as the Technical Advisor to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In her role as USGS Research Ecologist for the NE CSC, Toni Lyn uses geospatial analysis, species distribution modeling, occupancy modeling, and population and landscape genetics techniques to facilitate natural resource management and habitat and species conservation in the face of climate and land use change. Currently she is investigating how climate change is affecting boreal communities in the northeastern United States.
If you want to know more about Toni Lyn's previous research, including her work with lemurs, follow this link to a comic of her research.
Expertise
- Landscape and species conservation
- Climate adaptation
- Translational ecology
- Mammal vulnerability
- Decision analysis
Education
Affiliations
Media Coverage
- Amherst Wire: Massachusetts 2050: A Warming State--Shifting Species in Local Ecosystems, April 6, 2021
- The Wildlife Society: Researchers Craft Roadmap for Studying Wildlife Communities, March 31, 2020
- Science Daily: The Do's and Don'ts of Monitoring Many Wildlife Species at Once, February 25, 2020
- New England Public Radio: Consevationists Try To Thwart Climate Change by Planting in Cold Spots, June 21, 2017
- Wildlife Conservation Society Magazine: Steps to managing climate change refugia for wildlife, August 24, 2016
- New England Public Radio: Researchers At UMass Look For The Places That Climate Change Forgot, August 23, 2016
- UMass Press Release: Managing Climate Change Refugia to Protect Wildlife, August 10, 2016