Profiles from the Peninsula - Laura Edith Ibarra Flores
- Climate Science Alliance
- Dec 23, 2020
- 2 min read
Profiles from the Peninsula is a series dedicated to spotlighting the partners who make up the Baja Working Group, and their projects. This week’s profile is on Laura Edith Ibarra Flores and how she uses her interdisciplinary background to implement conservation efforts on a local scale.
Puedes leer este blog en español aquí.
Profiles from the Peninsula is a series dedicated to spotlighting the partners who make up the Baja Working Group, and their projects. Each week, we will bring you a new profile in the form of a blog like this one. More information about the working group can be found here.
Laura Edith Ibarra Flores is a landscape architect with a master’s degree in Ecosystem Management of Arid Zones, who specializes in environmental management through the use of geographic information systems. Presently, she is a Coastal Solutions Fellow at the Cornell Ornithology Lab, which focuses on coastal threats facing the Latin American Pacific. Her project, entitled “Climate Adaptation and Habitat Restoration in Guerrero Negro Wetland Complex” focuses on the conservation of shorebirds and their habitats in Guerrero Negro, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
This Fellowship has allowed Laura to consider conservation through a climate lens. From her perspective, climate resilience means “lessening and adapting to the negative effects of climate change, while strengthening the capacity to recover through scientific studies of ecosystems, forecasting the effects that climate change will bring to specific habitats and species, and determining what actions to take to ensure their conservation.”
Laura is putting this view into practice through her Fellowship project, a collaborative effort in Baja to create a master plan for the prevention and mitigation of impacts to shorebirds of the Ojo de Liebre Wetland Complex. Laura is able to apply her interdisciplinary background towards transformative local-level conservation efforts. In this way, Laura aims to produce work that focuses on developing green infrastructure projects at local levels that can at the same time guide other regions to develop similar efforts.
The Baja Working Group convenes local and international scientists, resource managers, conservation groups, educators, philanthropists, and other stakeholders to advance collaborative efforts that build resilience in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and in human communities. Learn more here.