Zach Ferdaña is a Senior Program Manager at The Nature Conservancy. He leads Coastal Resilience and the Natural Solutions Toolkit programs in the U.S. and internationally, focused on ecosystem-based management, climate adaptation and resilience using nature-based solutions. Specifically, he manages the design and implementation of web mapping decision support tools and apps to promote the role of habitats and ecosystems in hazard mitigation, conservation and climate adaptation planning.
This includes the oversight of projects in 17 U.S. coastal states, in sites across the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America, and emerging in Australia and Southeast Asia (http://maps.coastalresilience.org). The geospatial technology in the Natural Solutions Toolkit (http://naturalsolutionstoolkit.org) supports all five Nature Conservancy priority areas (oceans, climate, land, water, cities), where Zach provides strategic planning, program management and geodesign expertise.
He received his degree in Environmental Studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, with concentration in Landscape Ecology and Marine Mammal Biology in 1994. He went on to earn an advanced technical degree in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) at the University of Washington in 1998. He joined The Nature Conservancy in 2000.
Data can help tell us about the health of our planet, including the conditions of our air, water, land and the well-being of our wildlife. But we need help converting this ocean of data into actionable intelligence.