Susan Waters

Center for Natural Lands Management
Dr. Waters is the Rare Species Ecologist at the Center for Natural Lands Management in Olympia, Washington. Her research focuses on plant-pollinator community dynamics in Puget Trough/ Willamette Valley prairies, and on restoration of habitat for rare butterflies. Dr. Waters’ training is in pollination ecology and plant community ecology, with an emphasis on species interactions under climate change. She earned her doctorate at the University of Washington, where her research focused on native-exotic plant interactions mediated by pollinators and the effects of phenological shifting on those interactions. She currently studies how prairie plant-pollinator networks change as sites undergo restoration and as native plant populations rebound. Dr. Waters also co-founded and co-directed the Urban Pollination Project, a citizen science initiative in Seattle that investigated urban land use impacts on bumblebee foraging and urban food production. Dr. Waters is an affiliate professor at the University of Washington-Bothell.