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Join us for the next Baker Center Energy and Environment Forum, which will take place on Thursday, March 2nd at 1:00 pm in the Toyota Auditorium in the Baker Center. Thomas Gillespie, from UCLA, will give a 45 minute presentation and then lead a discussion with participants. His talk is titled: Geospatial application for biodiversity and protected areas mapping Abstract: Dr. Gillespie will be discussing research that examines geospatial technologies that can be used to model species distributions and monitor protected areas. The presentation will focus on case studies in Biodiversity Hotspots and address: 1) the best methods for creating species distribution maps, 2) how to create biodiversity maps, and 3) the best remote sensing methods and metrics for monitoring protected areas. Dr. Thomas Gillespie is a Professor in the Department of Geography at UCLA with research interests in using geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing data for predicting patterns of species richness and rarity for plants and birds at a regional spatial scale. His botanical research will continue to focus on surveying tropical dry forests in biodiversity hotspots. This research is field intensive and taxonomically challenging but provides comparative floristic and structural data for regions where relatively little information exists. His remote sensing research is divided into airborne and spaceborne sensors that can be used to measure and monitor terrestrial vegetation. A long-term goal of his research is to develop algorithms that predict the distribution of plants and endangered species in tropical dry forest regions and California ecosystems. The Baker Center Energy and Environment Forum is an opportunity for academics to share their research findings with a broad set of academics, researchers, and students from outside their own discipline but who have a common interest in environment and energy issues. For more information about the Baker Center Energy and Environment Forum visit the forum’s website: http://bakercenter.utk.edu/energy-environment/. Please join us for what promises to be a very interesting discussion and presentation. Charlie Kwit, College of Arts and Sciences/College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources Charles Sims, Haslam College of Business Becky Jacobs, College of Law Don Hodges, College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources