biology

Wendy Foden

Wendy Foden is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Wendy Foden rather than just read about it. In short: Wendy Foden is a South African conservation biologist, best known for her work documenting climate change and its impacts driving loss of biodiversity. Foden led the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) group that named which groups of plants and animals are most at risk for damage from climate change.

Key takeaways

Wendy Foden belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Wendy Foden to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Wendy Foden from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Wendy Foden is a South African conservation biologist, best known for her work documenting climate change and its impacts driving loss of biodiversity. Foden led the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) group that named which groups of plants and animals are most at risk for damage from climate change. Foden conducts outreach to educate the public that climate change is happening.

Education Foden earned a BS with distinction in botany in 1996 at University of Witwatersrand. She completed her master's degree at the University of Cape Town (2001), and in 2002, earned a MS in conservation biology at UCT. During her master's research, Foden discovered a latitudinal pattern of die-off of quiver trees (Aloidendron dichotomum) suggesting that climate change could be to blame. She received funding to further the study, working with Guy Midgley at the South African National Biodiversity Institute in Cape Town. Foden spent much of 2001–2003 surveying quiver trees in Namibia and the arid regions of western South Africa and set up long term monitoring to track changes. Foden's findings confirmed a clear trend of increasing mortality along gradients from south (polewards) to north (towards the equator) and from higher to lower altitudes, suggesting that the species responds to a poleward shift in suitable climate, but that colonization at the leading range edge is lagging. The study was published in 2007 and was one of the first papers to document climate change impacts on plants, arid ecosystems or in Africa. The work formed the main focus of a TVE Documentary, "All of a quiver", screened on BBC World in April 2007.

Career From 2003 to 2007 Foden managed the South African National Biodiversity Institute's Threatened Species Programme, based in Pretoria. In this capacity she played leading roles in establishing atlasing and conservation assessment programs for plants, reptiles, butterflies and arachnids. She established a scholarship for postgraduate research on threatened species and served as chairperson of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Southern African Plant Specialist Group. In 2007 Foden moved to the United Kingdom to join the IUCN Global Species Programme, based in Cambridge. Working with scientists from the IUCN Species Survival Commission, she developed a method of assessing species' vulnerability to climate change that involves modeling each species' predicted exposure to climate change and examining the biological traits that are likely to make them more or less sensitive and able to adapt to these changes. In a 2013 publication, Foden and her co-authors describe the method and its application to all birds, amphibians and corals. The study highlights the species in these groups at highest risk of climate change driven extinction, as well as the regions in which they are concentrated. The study compares species' climate change vulnerabilities with their risk of extinction on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and highlights both most urgent and new priorities for conservation. Foden and her team also applied the approach in regionally-focused climate change vulnerability assessment projects in East and Central Africa's Albertine Rift, West Africa and Madagascar. Foden carries out a range of activities to raise awareness about climate change impacts on biodiversity, including through talks and seminars. In 2009 she led a public-orientated report and press release entitled 'Ten New Climate Change Flagships: More Than Just the Polar Bear' at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference. She was a guest lecturer on the University of Cambridge Conservation Leadership MPhil course in the 2010s. Foden has been a steering committee member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Climate Change Specialist Group for many years, and is a Trustee of the Environment Africa Trust. As of 2016, Foden chaired the IUCN SSC Climate Change Specialist Group when the team created new guidelines for the conservation community, for assessing species' vulnerability to climate change. At that time she was also a Senior Researcher at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. From 2023-2026, Foden was the lead scientist on the SANParks’ scientific services unit project to restore the biodiversity on Cape Town's Table Mountain. She notes the average temperature in Cape Town has risen and is affecting the many microclimates along the slopes.

Awards Foden was awarded the BES Marsh Award for Climate Change Research (2020). She is the second South African conservation scientist to earn the George Rabb Award for Conservation Innovation from the SSC division of the IUCN in 2019. Foden was featured in the TEDxCapeTown Salon in 2017 to discuss impacts of climate change on species survival.

References

External links The South African National Biodiversity Institute The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) The IUCN Species Survival Commission The IUCN Global Species Programme "Earth Report - All of a Quiver". YouTube. 14 January 2009. Archived from the original on 15 December 2021. Retrieved 18 August 2013.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Wendy Foden

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Wendy Foden claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Wendy Foden before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Wendy Foden ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Wendy Foden

In research: Wendy Foden appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Wendy Foden in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Wendy Foden is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Living people, South African biologists, South African ecologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Wendy Foden outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Wendy Foden in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Wendy Foden means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Wendy Foden out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Wendy Foden in simple terms?

Why does Wendy Foden matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Wendy Foden?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Wendy Foden.