Jill Bubier

Jill L. Bubier
Alma mater	PhD., McGill University, Physical Geography, 1994 M.S., University of Vermont, Botany, 1989 J.D., University of Maine School of Law, 1978 B.A., Bowdoin College, 1974
Known for	Studying greenhouse gas exchange in boreal, sub-arctic, and arctic area.
Scientific career
Institutions	Professor Emeritus at Mount Holyoke College

Jill L. Bubier is a professor emerita of environmental science at Mount Holyoke College (MHC). Her research examines how Northern ecosystems respond to climate change.

Education

Bubier graduated from Bowdoin College in 1974 with a bachelor's degree in government and history. She then studied in University of Maine School of Law to earn her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1978. She earned a Master of Science (M.S.) in botany at the University of Vermont in 1989. She then earned her PhD in physical geography at McGill University in 1994. Bubier's PhD thesis "Methane flux and plant distribution in northern peatlands" examined at how floristic pattern relates to methane emission in the mid-boreal clay belt region of Canada, and sub-arctic region of Quebec.

Career and research

Bubier worked briefly as a staff attorney in the Maine Law Institute. At the Coastal Zone 85 Conference in Baltimore, she presented a paper on "The Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act" in 1985.

Bubier is a professor emeritus in the Environmental Science department of Mount Holyoke College where she began working in 1998. Her research focused at peatland, wetland ecology, plant ecology, greenhouse gases exchange, and the related feedbacks connected to climate change. Moreover, in Bubier's time as a professor, she did not abandon her role as a field scientist, working in the peatland systems of boreal, sub-arctic, and Arctic regions in Canada, Alaska, and Scandinavia. One of her most cited papers, "Spatial and Temporal Variability in Growing-Season Net Ecosystem Carbon Dioxide Exchange at a Large Peatland in Ontario, Canada" addressed the net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of carbon dioxide (CO₂) across the peatland in Ottawa to better understand and predict the ecosystem response to climate change.

Bubier also has received funding awards from multiple organizations including the NSF and NASA. In 1999, she received a grant of $350,000 study boreal system's atmospheric exchange. She received ~$500K from NSF for her research titled "Strategies for Understanding the Effects of Global Climate and Environmental Change on Northern Peatlands" in 2004. She also received another grant of ~$885K for her research titled "Ecosystem responses to atmospheric N deposition in an ombrotrophic bog: vegetation and microclimate feedbacks lead to stronger C sink or source?" in 2014.

Some of her notable publications include:

• Spatial and Temporal Variability in Growing-Season Net Ecosystem Carbon Dioxide Exchange at a Large Peatland in Ontario, Canada.
• Ecological controls on methane emissions from a Northern Peatland Complex in the zone of discontinuous permafrost, Manitoba, Canada.
• The Relationship of Vegetation to Methane Emission and Hydrochemical Gradients in Northern Peatlands.
• Methane Emissions from Wetlands in the Midboreal Region of Northern Ontario, Canada.
• Seasonal patterns and controls on net ecosystem CO₂ exchange in a boreal peatland complex.

Awards and honors

Bubier is a renowned environmental scientist. From 2007 to 2009, she was a member of the Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education in the National Science Foundation (NSF), on which she helped set guidelines for the priorities of Environmental Science research. She was awarded with Editors' Citation for Excellence in Refereeing in 2003 for reviewing Global Biogeochemical Cycles.