Study Areas
Biogeography, macroecology, species diversity, species distribution/niche modeling, suitability modeling, ecoinformatics, global change, population ecology, endangered species, and GIS.
Academic Background
I have a Master of Science degree in natural resources at the University of Arizona, where I conducted research that broadly centers on the topics of biogeography, biodiversity, and macroecology, through studies of species diversity patterns, determinants of geographic range boundaries, and species distribution modeling. I am particularly interested in how the geographic distributions of species are influenced by climate and climate change. While some of my work is continental in scale across diverse organisms, a significant component is also targeted at understanding the limits of the distribution of Sonoran desert and Mojave Desert plant species.
As part of my research, I helped support the Botanical Inventory and Ecology Network (BIEN) project (an NCEAS funded working group) through previous roles managing the geographic coordinate validation effort as a Research Intern in Bioinformatics and Geospatial Analysis for an iPlant Seed Project on Botanical Geospatial Diversity Cyberinfrastructure [pdf], and a later role in managing the BIEN species distribution modeling efforts.
NCEAS Working Groups
I worked as part of the Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN), funded by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). The BIEN project aims to combine existing sets of vegetation data for the New World into a database of several million species occurrence records (actually 25+ million and growing). The database forms the largest assembly of data on plant diversity and distribution for both tropical and temperate plant species, and it allows us to address very large-scale questions about how climate and climate change influence species range sizes, abundance and extinction risk.
I also participated in an NCEAS funded project, named Climate and Organisms, that seeks to understand how the environment controls species distributions by assembling a state-of-the-art set of environmental layers that incorporate well-known but rarely used measures having direct links to physiological processes like frost, water stress, growing season, soil properties, drainage properties, etc. The group is assembling these variables into a unified, global, gridded, high resolution GIS data set that will be made available to the public. Finally the group is using this data to explore what factors are actually the most important and most predictive in determining where a species lives and examining questions about the nature of links between the environment and the distribution of organisms.
Research
One of the main goals of my research program is examining how aspects of climate influence the geographic distributions of species across scales, so that we may begin to understand how those distributions may be affected by climate change. With this in mind, I focus on several lines of research that include:
- Assessing various definitions of a species’ geographic range size: there are several methods used in scientific literature without consensus as to which methods are better than others. How accurate are various computational methods when compared to expert range estimates?
- Examining the relationship between climate variability and geographic range size. The common perception is that plants with large geographic ranges occupy a broader climatic regime than plants with smaller geographic ranges. Is this true?
- Testing the climate envelope assumption that the geographic ranges of many species may shift higher in latitude and elevation as a generic response to a warming climate.
- Investigating whether climate may regulate landscape-level processes, such as maximal woody cover in North American savanna systems.
Education
- M.S., Natural Resources, University of Arizona
- M.B.A (GIS Emphasis), University of Redlands
- Certificate in GIS, with Honors, University of California Riverside Extension
- B.A., with Honors, Geography, California State University, San Bernardino
- B.A., with Honors, Environmental Studies, California State University, San Bernardino
- A.A., with Honors, Anthropology, San Bernardino Valley College
Publications
Book Chapters
- Rosenzweig, M.L., J.C. Donoghue II, M.L., Yue, C. Yuan. Estimating Species Diversity. 2010. Pages 276-288 in McGill, B.J., Magurran, A.E., editors Biological Diversity Frontiers in Measurement and Assessment. Oxford University Press, New York New York, USA.
Abstracts
Donoghue II, J.C., N. Morueta-Holme, B. Boyle, L.L. Sloat, B.J. Enquist, B.J. McGill, J.C. Svenning, R. Condit. 2012. Quantifying the fundamental unit of biogeography: Assessing different methods to measure geographic range size and why it matters. 97th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America. Portland, OR.
Thesis
Donoghue, John. (2016). Geographic Range Size: Measuring The Fundamental Unit Of Biogeography and Evaluating Climatic Factors That May Influence Longitudinal Range Size Gradients In North American Trees.
Articles
Enquist, Brian & Feng, Xiao & Boyle, Brad & Maitner, Brian & Newman, Erica & Jørgensen, Peter & Roehrdanz, Patrick & Thiers, Barbara & Burger, Joseph & Corlett, R. & Couvreur, Thomas & Dauby, Gilles & Donoghue, John & Foden, Wendy & Lovett, Jon & Marquet, Pablo & Merow, Cory & Midgley, Guy & Morueta-Holme, Naia & Mcgill, Brian. (2019). The commonness of rarity: Global and future distribution of rarity across land plants. Science Advances. 5. eaaz0414. 10.1126/sciadv.aaz0414.
Enquist, Brian & Feng, Xiao & Boyle, Brad & Maitner, Brian & Newman, Erica & Jørgensen, Peter & Roehrdanz, Patrick & Thiers, Barbara & Burger, Joseph & Corlett, Richard & Donoghue, John & Foden, Wendy & Lovett, Jon & Marquet, Pablo & Merow, Cory & Morueta-Holme, Naia & Kraft, Nathan & Park, Daniel & Peet, Robert & Mcgill, Brian. (2019). The commonness of rarity: Global and future distribution of rarity across land plants. 10.32942/osf.io/qfpa9. (preprint)
Maitner, Brian & Boyle, Brad & Casler, Nathan & Condit, Rick & Donoghue, John & Durán, Sandra & Guaderrama, Daniel & Hinchliff, Cody & Jørgensen, Peter & Kraft, Nathan & McGill, Brian & Merow, Cory & Morueta-Holme, Naia & Peet, Robert & Sandel, Brody & Schildhauer, Mark & Smith, Stephen & Svenning, Jens-Christian & Thiers, Barbara & Enquist, Brian. (2017). The bien r package: A tool to access the Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN) database. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. 9. 10.1111/2041-210x.12861.
Benjamin Blonder, David Nogué S-Bravo, Michael K Borregaard, John C Donoghue II, Peter M Jørgensen, Nathan J B Kraft, Jean-Philippe Lessard, Naia Morueta-Holme, Brody Sandel, Jens-Christian Svenning, Cyrille Violle, Carsten Rahbek, Brian J Enquist, Linking environmental filtering and disequilibrium to biogeography with a community climate framework (2015), Ecology 96(4):972-985. doi: 10.1890/14-0589.1
Irena Šímová, Cyrille Violle, Nathan J. B. Kraft, David Storch, Jens‐Christian Svenning, Brad Boyle, John C. Donoghue, Peter Jørgensen, Brian J. McGill, Naia Morueta‐Holme, William H. Piel, Robert K. Peet, Jim Regetz, Mark Schildhauer, Nick Spencer, Barbara Thiers, Susan Wiser, Brian J. Enquist, Shifts in trait means and variances in North American tree assemblages: species richness patterns are loosely related to the functional space (2015). Ecography 11/2014; doi:10.1111/ecog.00867
Christine Lamanna, Benjamin Blonder, Cyrille Violle, Nathan J B Kraft, Brody Sandel, Irena Símová, John C Donoghue II, Jens-Christian Svenning, Brian J Mcgill, Brad Boyle, […], Aaron Marcuse-Kubitza, Naia Morueta-Holme, Robert K Peet, William H Piel, James Regetz, Mark Schildhauer, Nick Spencer, Barbara Thiers, Susan K Wiser, Brian J Enquist. Functional trait space and the latitudinal diversity gradient (2014). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 09/2014; 111(38):13745-13750. doi:10.1073/pnas.1317722111
Morueta-Holme, N., Enquist, B. J., McGill, B. J., Boyle, B., Jørgensen, P. M., Ott, J. E., Peet, R. K., Šímová, I., Sloat, L. L., Thiers, B., Violle, C., Wiser, S. K., Dolins, S., Donoghue, J. C., Kraft, N. J. B., Regetz, J., Schildhauer, M., Spencer, N., Svenning, J.-C. (2013), Habitat area and climate stability determine geographical variation in plant species range sizes. Ecology Letters. doi: 10.1111/ele.12184
Michael Rosenzweig, Vanessa Buzzard, John Donoghue II, Gavin Lehr, Natasha Mazumdar, Haley M Rasmussen, Irena Simova, Scott Trageser, Heather Wernett, Jingzi Xu. Patterns in the Diversity of the World’s Land Vertebrate Genera (2013). Evolutionary ecology research 11/2013
PRESENTATIONS
Enquist, B.J., B. Boyle, J.C. Donoghue II, B. Thiers, P. Jorgensen, B.J. McGill, J.C. Svenning, R. Condit, N. Morueta-Holme, L.L. Sloat, R. Peet, and The BIEN Working Group. The commonness and distribution of rarity: Quantifying the botanical diversity of all plant species in the Americas. International Biodiversity Society Sixth Biennial Conference. Miami, FL.
Enquist, B.J., B. Boyle, J.C. Donoghue II, B. Thiers, P. Jorgensen, B.J. McGill, J.C. Svenning, R. Condit, N. Morueta-Holme, L.L. Sloat, BIEN Working Group. 2012. The commonness and distribution of rarity: Quantifying the botanical diversity of all plant species in the Americas. 97th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America. Portland, OR.
Donoghue II, J.C. 2011. Does the climatic variability hypothesis explain the longitudinal range size gradient in North American trees? University of Arizona GradBlitz, Tucson, AZ.
Donoghue II, J.C., 2011. Using GIS to Automate Distribution Models for New World Trees. ESRI User Conference, San Diego, CA.
Donoghue II, J.C. 2007. Improving Public Information Websites through Interactive Website Technologies. American Association of Airport Executives Noise Mitigation Symposium, San Diego, CA.
Donoghue II, J.C. 2006. Implementing an As-built Drawing Database and Search Engine Using GIS. Southwest GIS User Group Conference, Flagstaff, AZ.
POSTERS
Donoghue II, J.C., N. Moreta-Home, B. Boyle, L.L. Sloat, B.J. Enquist, B.J. McGill, J.C. Svenning, and The BIEN Working Group. Quantifying the fundamental unit of biogeography: Assessing different methods to measure geographic range size and why it matters. International Biodiversity Society Sixth Biennial Conference. Miami, FL.
Assembly of plant communities in climate space, Benjamin Blonder, D. Nogués-Bravo, C. Rahbek, B.J. Enquist, B. Boyle, J. Donoghue, R. Condit, R.K. Peet, S. Dolins, M. Schildhauer, B. McGill, P. Jorgenson, M. Narro, J. Regetz, C. Violle, L. Sloat, B. Piel, N. Kraft, J.C. Svenning, B. Theirs, I. Simova, N. Morueta-Holme, N. Spensor, S. Wiser, J. Ott, B. Dobrin, S. Andelman, and K. Engemann Jensen. International Biodiversity Society Sixth Biennial Conference. Miami, FL.
Simova, I., C. Violle, N.J.B. Kraft , D. Storch, B. Boyle, J.C. Donoghue II, B.J. Enquist. 2012. Scale-dependent trait filtering of woody diversity in North America. 97th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America. Portland, OR.
Donoghue II, J.C. 2011. Does the climatic variability hypothesis explain the longitudinal range size gradient in North American trees? 96th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, Austin, TX.
Donoghue II, J.C. 2011. The longitudinal range size gradient in North American trees. ESRI User Conference, San Diego, CA.
SCHOLARSHIPS AND FELLOWSHIPS
- Pistor-Stanley Scholarships in Agriculture (2013), $800
- Agriculture and Life Sciences Graduate Tuition Scholarship (2011), $2,101
- NCEAS Research Assistantship (2010), $1500
- Tuition and Registration Scholarship (2010), $1223
- Agriculture and Life Sciences Graduate Tuition Scholarship (2009), $4,000
HONORS AND AWARDS
- Banta Center for Business, Ethics and Society, Case Study Award, Univ. of Redlands (2006)
- University Honors, 1998, University of California Riverside Extension.
- University Honors, 1995, California State University San Bernardino.
- Graduated with Distinction, 1990, San Bernardino Valley College.
GRANTS AWARDED
(from prior work in conservation)
Grants Authored
- California Office of Historic Preservation: Historic Resources Inventory Database Phase II Enhancement Project, 2000 ($ 16,500)
- Environmental Protection Agency and California State Water Resources Control Board: Upper Santa Ana Watershed-Wide Invasive Species Eradication and Public Outreach Plan, 1997 ($ 191,830)
- Environmental Protection Agency and California State Water Quality Control Board: Alternative Dairy Waste Management Practices, 1996 ($ 504,000)
- Environmental Protection Agency and California State Water Quality Control Board: Mill Creek Watershed Protection Program, 1994 ($ 255,000)
- California Department of Agriculture Fertilizer Research and Education Program (FREP): Managing Agricultural Non-Point Source Pollution, 1994 ($105,000)
Grants Co-authored
- Environmental Protection Agency: Wild About Wetlands, 1997
- South Coast Air Quality Management District: Smog Busters, 1997
- California Department of Education: Nature Discovery Improvement Project, 1996
- Environmental Protection Agency: Santa Ana Watershed Enhancement Project, 1996
- Phillips Petroleum Company: Habitat Discovery Trail, 1995
- California Department of Parks and Recreation: Glen Helen Habitat Trail, 1994
- California Department of Transportation: Devore Road Restoration Program, 1994
CERTIFICATIONS HELD
- Certified ArcGIS Desktop Professional, ESRI.
- Certified Geographic Information Systems Professional (GISP), GIS Certification Institute.
TECHNICAL SKILLS
ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Pro, Collector, Survey 123, ArcGIS Online/Enterprise, QGIS, R, SQL Server, Microsoft Access, Python, C# ASP.net (MVC), Visual Basic .net, HTML, CSS, XML, Trimble GPS, Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
John Donoghue 
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