Painting pictures of changing marine environments, particularly coral reefs and the Isthmus of Panama, Jackson's research captures the extreme environmental decline of the oceans that has accelerated in the past 200 years.Jeremy Jackson has pioneered work dealing with historical declines of marine ecosystems and shifting baselines of scientists studying them. Among his most important work was leading an interdisciplinary working group, composed of ecologists, anthropologists, archeologists and historians, to reconstruct marine ecosystem dynamics for the last several hundred years.
This resulted in a seminal paper led by Jackson (Science 2001) showing that fishing predated any other major disturbance to marine ecosystems in the Holocene. It is, so far, the most cited paper coming out of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) in Santa Barbara, and one of the most cited papers in marine ecology.
Jackson's current work focuses on the future of the world's oceans, given overfishing, habitat destruction and ocean warming, which have fundamentally changed marine ecosystems and led to "the rise of slime."
Although Jackson's work describes grim circumstances, even garnering him the nickname Dr. Doom, he believes that successful management and conservation strategies can renew the ocean's health.
As a counterweight to Jackson's pessimistic projections, see some of the more uplifting work happily promoted by his wife, Professor Nancy Knowlton: Pathways to Ocean Success Stories
