Nichole Nannette Barger

Nichole Barger is Deputy Chief Scientist at The Nature Conservancy and Professor Emeritus and the University of Colorado at Boulder in the United States. Barger to support sustainable land management and restoration of a broad variety of ecosystems worldwide. Barger was a coordinating lead author of The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) global land degradation and restoration assessment. In her research program, Barger has worked in partnership with diverse governmental entities on land degradation and restoration issues, such as the ecological risks of fire mitigation treatments, historical drivers and biogeochemical responses to woody plant encroachment, forest decline and regeneration, and more recently restoration of degraded dryland ecosystems with a specific focus on soil ecology. Barger also has extensive research experience working on conservation and management issues in dryland ecosystems across the globe. She has worked with international research teams in the semi-arid grasslands of Inner Mongolia and anthropogenic grassland ecosystems of Venezuela, in addition to work in southern Africa on plant invasions in the biodiversity hot spot of the Cape Floristic region of South Africa and vegetation dynamics of the Namib Desert of Namibia. Barger received her master’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley and holds a Ph.D. from Colorado State University.