Postdoc Large Scale Ecology, McGill University, Canada
PhD Wildlife Ecology, University of Maine, USA
MS (Dipl.-Biol) Conservation Biology, Philipps-University, Germany

My main interest is in the distribution and abundance of species over space because it is at the heart of the species-environment relationship and thus ecology and it is vital to conservation biology and planning. Understanding species distributions in a causal manner is vital for threatened species management, climate change planning and protected area design. My research combines high-level ecological theory and spatial analysis to address fundamental questions in ecology and to improve tools for applied ecology and conservation biology.

Within the field of species distribution modeling I work on topics such as statistics (especially machine learning techniques), data assembly and management (ecological data sets and remote sensing data), effects of climate and land-use change on species distributions, and spatial patterns and mechanisms underlying species distributions. Population dynamics and dispersal play a prominent role in my investigations of mechanisms underlying distributions. I also use insights and approaches from community ecology to improve the understanding of distributions.

In addition, I'm planning to start field based research, in which I have years of experience but which I haven't done lately. While my last focus was on birds I'm open to work on a wide range of organisms as long as the work promises advances in ecology and conservation.

Finally, I have a strong interest in conservation policy. In particular, I have participated in studies of the effects of forest certification schemes on forest practices.

Representative Publications:

Bahn, V. 2008. Failure to find the relationship between dispersal and spatial autocorrelation in species distributions. Journal of Negative Results in Ecology and Evolution 5(1):1-13.
Bahn, V., W. B. Krohn, and R. J. O’Connor. 2008. Dispersal leads to autocorrelation in animal distributions: a simulation model. Ecological Modelling 213(3-4):285-292.
Bahn, V., B. J. McGill. 2007. Can niche-based distribution models outperform spatial interpolation? Global Ecology and Biogeography 16(6):733-742
This paper is featured in a commentary in the Journal of Biogeography by David Currie, the editor of Global Ecology and Biogeography and has been evaluated as “must read” by George Malanson for the Faculty of 1000 Biology.
Bahn, V., R. J. O’Connor, and W. B. Krohn. 2006. Importance of spatial autocorrelation in modeling bird distributions at a continental scale. Ecography 29:835-844.
Bahn V., R. J. O'Connor, and W. B. Krohn. 2006. Effect of dispersal at range edges on the structure of species ranges. Oikos 115:89-96.
Newsom, D. N., V. Bahn, and B. Cashore. 2006. Does forest certification matter? An analysis of operation-level changes required during the SmartWood certification process in the United States. Forest Policy and Economics 9:197-208.
Burger A. E., and V. Bahn. 2004. Inland habitat associations of Marbled Murrelets on southwest Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Journal of Field Ornithology 75(1):53-66.