Iara Lacher is a landscape ecologist and program lead with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute's Changing Landscapes Initiative. She has an interdisciplinary background in policy and environmental management, which she leverages into applied biodiversity and conservation research on the factors that influence the distribution and diversity of species across landscapes.

Lacher earned a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California, Davis, where her dissertation evaluated the climatic responses of native plant species and the use of species distribution models to predict extinction risk. Her current work combines scenario planning and spatially explicit land-use models to illustrate how different land-use features may impact biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Article

• Quinn, John E., Fergus, Craig, Hyland, Emilia, Vickery, Caroline, Lacher, Iara L., and Akre, Thomas S. 2024. "Ecosystem Service and Biodiversity Patterns Observed across Co-Developed Land Use Scenarios in the Piedmont: Lessons Learned for Scale and Framing." Land, 13, (9). https://doi.org/10.3390/land13091340. 2024
• Lacher, Iara, Fergus, Craig, McShea, William J., Plisinski, Joshua, Morreale, Luca, and Akre, Thomas S. 2023. "Modeling alternative future scenarios for direct application in land use and conservation planning." Conservation Science and Practice, https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.12940. 2023
• Fergus, Craig, Lacher, Iara L., Herrmann, Valentine, McShea, William J., and Akre, Thomas S. 2023. "Predicting vulnerability of forest patches to invasion by non-native plants for landscape scale management." Ecological Applications, https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2857. 2023
• Ahmadisharaf, Ebrahim, Lacher, Iara L., Fergus, Craig, Benham, Brian L., Akre, Thomas, and Kline, Karen S. 2020. "Projecting land use change impacts on nutrients, sediment and runoff in multiple spatial scales: Business-as-usual vs. stakeholder-informed scenarios." Journal of Cleaner Production, 257 Article 120466. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.120466. 2020
• Lacher, Iara, Akre, Thomas, McShea, William J., McBride, Marissa, Thompson, Jonathan R., and Fergus, Craig. 2019. "Engaging regional stakeholders in scenario planning for the long-term preservation of ecosystem services in Northwestern Virginia." Case Studies in the Environment, 3, (1) 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1525/cse.2018.001180. 2019
• Cove, Michael V., Fergus, Craig, Lacher, Iara, Akre, Thomas, and McShea, William J. 2019. "Projecting Mammal Distributions in Response to Future Alternative Landscapes in a Rapidly Transitioning Region." Remote Sensing, 11, (21) 2482. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11212482. 2019
• Lacher, Iara, Akre, Thomas, McShea, William J., and Fergus, Craig. 2019. "Spatial and temporal patterns of public and private land protection within the Blue Ridge and Piedmont ecoregions of the eastern US." Landscape and Urban Planning, 186 91–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2019.02.008. 2019
• Lacher, Iara L., Ahmadisharaf, Ebrahim, Fergus, Craig, Akre, Thomas, McShea, William J., Benham, Brian L., and Kline, Karen S. 2018. "Scale-dependent impacts of urban and agricultural land use on nutrients, sediment, and runoff." Science of the Total Environment, 652 611–622. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.09.370. 2018
• Empirical test on the relative climatic sensitivity between individuals of narrowly and broadly distributed species.  Ecosphere.  7. 2016