Thomas Gillespie

Thomas Gillespie is an American geographer and professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Gillespie's main area of research is in determining the patterns of species richness within a given geography, specifically native Hawaiian flora and tropical dry forests in biodiversity hotspot such as Hawaii, Sundaland, Indo-Burma, New Caledonia and the Caribbean, through remote sensing and GIS. His research has been used to inform global conservation policies and natural resource/tropical ecology management. Education Gillespie received his BA in international affairs from University of Colorado Boulder in 1990 and MA in geography from California State University, Chico in 1994. He went on to receive his PhD from UCLA in 1998. Career A 2008 study co-authored by Gillespie suggested that ethnic violence rather than the Iraq War troop surge of 2007 was the "primary factor in reducing violence in Iraq." UCLA researchers looked at light generation at different neighborhoods in Baghdad. Before the surge, Sunni neighborhoods' consumption heavily declined. However, during the surge, their consumption did not return whereas the Shiite neighborhoods either remained the same or increased. Gillespie suggested that “If the surge had truly 'worked,' we would expect to see a steady increase in night-light output over time."