Daniel L Perret
I'm a biogeographer, forest ecologist, and dendrochronologist. I'm currently an ORISE Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the US Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station.
Contact: daniel.perret@usda.gov
Teaching & Outreach
In general, I believe we learn best by doing. When I’m teaching, I strive to create a mutually supportive, respectful, and empathetic environment where students and mentees feel empowered to try new things, make mistakes, and learn in the process. I’ve taught in this way in the classroom, in the lab, and in the field, and look forward to building more experiential, collaborative, and engaging programs in the future. Some details and examples of past teaching and outreach are below.
Contents:
Workshops
In August 2023, I led a workshop at the annual ESA meeting in Portland titled “An introduction to estimating ecological change with the USDA Forest Service FIA database”, together with USFS scientists Harold Zald and Jane Terzibashian, and University of Maine PhD student Bailey McLaughlin. The FIA database is an incredibly rich source of ecological data, but can be complicated and intimidating for new users. The goal of the workshop was to “demystify” the database, provide background on the data, provide tools for new users, and help ecologists avoid common mistakes and pitfalls.
The workshop was paired with an organized talk session that highlighted new and innovative uses of the FIA database for global change ecology. Both sessions were well-attended and well-received, and we look forward to building on them in the future! All workshop materials can be found in this GitHub repository.
Guest lectures
Biol1470, Conservation Biology, Brown University
- Wildlife Management, Fall 2021
- Wildlife Management, Fall 2020
- Wildlife, Climate, & Conservation, Fall 2019
- Niches, Tree-rings, and Climate, Fall 2019
Bio 42, Ecology, Brown University
- Dendroecology (field and classroom), Spring 2019
Teaching assistantships
Conservation Biology (Biol 1470), Brown University Teaching assistant, Fall 2020
Conservation Biology (Biol 1470), Brown University Teaching assistant, Fall 2017
Mentoring
I’ve had numerous opportunities to mentor and train undergraduate researchers, both in the field and in the lab. I was the graduate student mentor for Morgan Florsheim’s 2020 undergraduate Honors thesis at Brown University, titled Understanding the role of adventive populations in tree species’ ability to track climate change, training and mentoring her in dendroecological field work, lab techniques, and analysis. I’ve also trained multiple other undergraduates in how to prepare, process, and cross-date tree-ring samples for ecological analyses. Other undergraduates that I trained in the use of GIS software for ecology are now using those skills as professional geospatial analysts and field ecologists.
Other
Here’s a fun video put together about a grizzly bear encounter we had while doing wildlife fieldwork in Yellowstone National Park. This video is being used in visitor centers, staff trainings, and other contexts to help teach about bear spray use and preparedness: