Timothy Kittel
- INSTAAR Affiliate
- Lecturer, CU Mountain Research Station
- Faculty Affiliate, SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education
- Editor-in-Chief, Climate
- ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY
Global change biology • Climate science
Timothy Kittel is a research ecologist and climate scientist.
After receiving his PhD in Ecology from the University of California, Davis, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, Colorado State University, Ft. Collins. Kittel has since held research positions at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (Colorado State University), the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), before joining the research faculty of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, in 2004.
Kittel has worked for over 40 years in the field of global change science, with contributions to our understanding of climate-biosphere interactions and historical climatic change and to the modeling of regional ecosystem and climate dynamics. Kittel's work on climate change impacts has been included in IPCC and US National Assessments. His current research is on approaches for handling climate change uncertainty in biodiversity conservation. Kittel has more than 90 peer-reviewed peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and edited books in ecology and climate dynamics, along with more than 40 climatic and ecological public-access datasets.
Kittel's teaching emphasizes field instruction in ecology and conservation biology. He has taught field courses for the University of Colorado Boulder, Semester-at-Sea, Columbia University of New York, and University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He currently teaches Winter Field Ecology in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and a study abroad course on Conservation Biology and Practice in Brazil's Atlantic Forest.
Education
- PhD Ecology: University of California, Davis, 1986
Research interests
- Global environmental change—conservation planning in the context of climate change
- Earth system science—terrestrial biosphere-climate interactions
- Climate analysis—climate change in high mountain systems
- Ecosystem geography
Research highlights
Biodiversity conservation planning and climate change.
- Earth System complexity and uncertain ecological futures (key publication: in Climate).
- Assessment of the complexity of species and system vulnerability to climate change (key publications: in Regional Environmental Change; in Vulnerability of Ecosystems to Climate, Elsevier).
- Development and implementation of a framework to address highly uncertain futures - through integration of scenario planning, vulnerability assessment, and no-regrets approaches (key publications: in BC Journal of Ecosystems and Management; in Vulnerability of Ecosystems to Climate, Elsevier).
Climate change in Colorado's Front Range (Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research Program, NWT-LTER).
- Analysis of elevational, seasonal, and decadal dependence in surface temperature and precipitation trends in subalpine vs. alpine sites (key publication in Plant Ecology and Diversity).
Development of climate data quality and analysis protocols for agency monitoring programs.
Teaching
Kittel is the Faculty Director for the CU Boulder Education Abroad Program global seminar Conservation Biology and Practice in Brazil's Atlantic Forest.
Publications
For additional publications, see Tim's Google Scholar profile.