Jill Baron

Baron studies ecosystem concepts in management of human-dominated regions, and effects of climate change on mountain ecosystems.

An ecosystem ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and a senior research ecologist with the Colorado State University Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Baron focuses on understanding the biogeochemical and ecological effects of climate change and atmospheric nitrogen deposition. Her research has found global change is reorganizing alpine species and ecosystem processes.

Baron is founder and co-director of the John Wesley Powell Center for Earth System Science Analysis and Synthesis. In 1983 she founded the Loch Vale Watershed long-term monitoring and research program in Rocky Mountain National Park that seeks to understand global change effects on high-elevation vegetation, soils and freshwaters. Baron was a member of the Project Management Board for the International Nitrogen Management Initiative and is serving as an editor for the 2024 International Nitrogen Assessment published by Cambridge University Press. She was the lead author of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program report on Climate Change Adaptation Options for National Parks and has given testimony to Congress on western acid rain and climate change issues.

Baron received her B.S. in plant sciences from Cornell University in 1976. She earned an M.S. in land resources from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1979 and her Ph.D. in Rangeland Ecosystem Ecology from CSU in 1991.