Research Expertise and Interest

climate change, science education

Research Description

Benjamin Blonder is associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, and holds the Haydn P. Reinecker Distinguished Professorship in Forest Genetics. He is an ecologist focusing on plant response to climate change, past and present. His work has focused on forest ecophysiological and genetic responses to climate stressors, community responses to long-term climate change, the ecophysiological response of plants to heatwaves, and on the theory of community assembly.

He is interested in improving science education through experiential approaches, and as such co-founded and currently supports the University of Arizona Sky School, a program that provides inquiry-based outdoor science education to K-12 students throughout the southwest.

He previously was assistant professor at Arizona State University's School of Life Sciences. He also has been a Natural Environment Research Council independent research fellow at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. He has also been a visitor at the Center for Macroecology, Evolution, and Climate (Copenhagen University), the Ecoinformatics & Biodiversity Group (Aarhus University) and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.