About

Lauren Harris is the Staff Ecologist at Channel Islands Restoration, a 501(c)(3) non-profit contractor working to restore habitat on the Channel Islands and adjacent mainland in the counties of Santa Barbara and Ventura. Here, she manages the organization’s research, identifies and pursues grant funding, and develops plans for mitigation, restoration, and monitoring. Prior to this, she graduated from the Bren School at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) with a Master of Environmental Science & Management (MESM) and a specialization in Conservation Planning (2023). Lauren also received her Bachelor of Science in Ecology and Evolution with Distinction in the Major from UCSB (2021).

Lauren is particularly passionate about plant ecology in a landscape context. Plants are an integral part of terrestrial ecology; they are abundant primary producers which influence and are influenced by the landscape. The goal is to use our insights on this relationship to better understand how to mitigate the effects of urbanization and climate change, and how to restore ecosystems already degraded by these factors.

She is skilled in ecological data analysis. Lauren has experience using R, QGIS, ArcGIS, and ArcMap for GIS-based analyses. Recent projects in this vein include the emLab/CI Agricultural Abandonment project, her Bren group project, and the Chaparral seed bank analysis. Manuscripts are currently in the works for the Agricultural Abandonment project and the Chaparral seed bank analysis.

In her free time, Lauren enjoys dancing Argentine tango, West Coast Swing, and Blues fusion. She is an avid photographer, mainly focusing on macro plant photography.