Rate My Professor Janet Franklin

Franklin’s research focuses on conservation biogeography, global change biology, species distribution modeling, landscape ecology, plant community ecology, spatial ecology, and geographic information science. At ASU, she examined terrestrial plant community dynamics at landscape scales, employing remote sensing, satellite imagery, GIS, and spatial statistics to analyze human impacts—including agriculture, urbanization, land use change, and altered fire regimes—on ecosystems. Her contributions include innovative species distribution models, multi-scale analyses linking climate, land use, and disturbances to habitat loss and species declines, and tools for forecasting landscape responses to global change. She published over 120 refereed papers, supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and National Geographic Society, and collaborated with the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey. Key works include the book Mapping Species Distributions: Spatial Inference and Prediction (Cambridge University Press, 2010), “Global change and terrestrial plant community dynamics” (PNAS, 2016), and “Achieving climate connectivity in a fragmented landscape” (PNAS, 2016). Franklin’s influence extends to sustainability science through roles as Senior Sustainability Scientist (2010–2014) and Distinguished Sustainability Scientist (2014–2017) at ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability. Major honors include election to the National Academy of Sciences (2014), ASU Regents’ Professor (2015), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2015), and Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (2015).