Rebecca Pinder
Rebecca Pinder studies the ecology of forest floors with her students at Columbia-Greene Community College, where she is an associate professor of Biological Science. Much of her research takes place in a model forest near the Catskills mountains. She explores salamander biology and behavior, asking how these essential forest creatures and their environments are affected by invasive earthworms. Pinder has worked in collaboration with other HSC members, such as Tim McCay, and she is also conducting a long-term investigation into the effects of jumping worms on local watersheds that she has been monitoring for nearly a decade.
Pinder has a PhD from the University at Albany in New York, where she began her study of salamanders and earthworms. She has always loved looking out into the world to observe what was around her, and once spent many a childhood day floating on the lakes of the Adirondacks, staring into the waters to see what lived beneath. Today, she still gets outside as much as possible, and is a self-described “haphazard gardener” who enjoys growing hardy plants and mowing her ever-narrower strip of lawn.
