Who I am
I study why we find living things beside each other and how this might change over time or space. I am especially interested in looking at the big questions in nature. I do this by going outside into the field and using computers. I love what I do and hope to improve our lands. For a jargon filled description of my research see below and find out more about me here!
Habitat suitability modelling
Understanding where species live, or ought to live, remains a major challenge in ecology and conservation. Habitat suitability modelling is an extremely useful tool for determining the ideal climates, resources, dependencies, and land covers to support the management of threatened species.
I have used series of habitat suitability modelling to quantify climate effects on trophic and non-trophic interactions, as well as determining the habitat characteristics of an endangered lizard species.
Landscape image classifier
Landscape are complex with features that including vegetation, abiotic (e.g., snow, rocks), or human-made. Quantifying these features is important to understand the characteristics of the landscape that species use. However, ground surveys can be costly, subjective, and inaccessible.
Currently, I am developing an image classifier that can be used to convert aerial imagery into snow cover for alpine meadows. Snowpack is crucial for overwintering species in the alpine and quantifying its cover will be an important step for managing biodiversity loss with climate change.
Human-nature interactions
Urban green spaces are areas that we typically visit the most. These refugia within cities often face a unique set of stressors including invasive species, pollution, warmer temperatures, and mediated stormwater. This relationship is not one directional and as nature in these parks change, so does our interaction with these lands.
I am currently using anonymized mobile cell data to determine human activity in greenspaces and the potential impact for urban biodiversity. Exploring this type of data allows us to answering questions that intersect at biological conservation, human health, and climate change.