Liza Morse is a postdoctoral fellow with VWL and with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center’s Bird Friendly program. As an avian ecologist and conservation biologist, her research focuses on bird-habitat relationships within working landscapes and the role that management of these landscapes plays in supporting bird communities. With VWL she is working to develop and assess guidance on Best Management Practices (BMPs) for farmers to support biodiversity conservation in Virginia’s working lands. Her research with Bird Friendly explores how shade tree selection in coffee agroforests can be used to support conservation and ecosystem service provisioning to farmers.

Liza has a Bachelor of Arts from Grinnell College and a PhD from the University of Vermont, where her research focused on the impacts of maple sugaring on Vermont’s forests and forest bird communities, and the impacts of coffee cultivation and forest cover on bird diversity in Colombia. Prior to graduate school, Liza worked with forest landowners to protect and steward forest land as the coordinator for Cold Hollow to Canada, a Regional Conservation Partnership located in northern Vermont. Liza also previously worked for Vermont Center for Ecostudies as a consultant to landowners interested in grassland bird habitat management and as the coordinator for a citizen science vernal pool monitoring program.