John Harte is a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the effects of human actions on, and the linkages among, biodiversity, ecosystem structure and function, and climate. His work spans a range of scales, from plot to landscape to global, and utilizes field manipulation experiments, the study of patterns in nature, and mathematical modeling. Two specific goals are to understand the nature and causes of patterns in the distribution and abundance of species and to understand the extent to which ecosystem responses to climate change may result in feedbacks to climate that can either ameliorate or exacerbate global warming. An overarching goal of his research is to understand the interdependence of human well-being and the health of ecosystems.