Birmingham Fellow | IIASA-NERC Research Fellow

University of Birmingham

IIASA, Vienna

Biography

I am a computational/spatial ecologist interested in understanding how anthropogenic changes such as climate and land-use change affect global ecosystems, and how this in turn affects human well-being.

I am particularly interested in using novel statistical methods and heterogeneous sources of data to answer applied and theoretical questions. I was previously a mathematician and database developer, and apply skills learned there to answer ecological questions.

I am currently working at the University of Birmingham in the role of Birmingham Fellow. The first three years of this will be spent working on the IIASA-NERC funded project A complex-systems approach to improve understanding of the biodiversity-landscape structure relationship.

Interests

  • Spatial ecology
  • Macroecology
  • Landscape ecology
  • Social-ecological systems
  • Statistics
  • Citizen Science

Education

  • PhD in Geography, 2015

    University of Nottingham

  • MSc in Environmental Management, 2011

    University of Nottingham

  • BSc in Mathematics, 2005

    University of Southampton

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Birmingham Fellow | IIASA-NERC Research Fellow

University of Birmingham

Jun 2020 – Present Birmingham, UK
Leading the IIASA-NERC funded project A complex-systems approach to improve understanding of the biodiversity-landscape structure relationship
 
 
 
 
 

Research Fellow in Spatial Modelling

University of Southampton

Nov 2016 – May 2020 Southampton, UK

Working on the ERC funded project SCALEFORES: Developing a science of scale for ecosystem services

PI: Felix Eigenbrod

 
 
 
 
 

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Stony Brook University

Apr 2015 – Oct 2016 Stony Brook, NY, USA

Working on the NASA funded project Combining time-series data, ecology and physiology to predict the consequences of climate change on hummingbird diversity

PI: Catherine Graham

Posts

Building a website with blogdown

Some resources for creating an academic website using blogdown and the Hugo academic theme.
May 27, 2018 5 min read

Projects

SCALEFORES

Scaling rules for ecosystem services.

Climate change impacts on hummingbirds

Combining time-series data, ecology and physiology to predict the consequences of climate change on hummingbird diversity

Planning urban landscapes for biodiversity

Strengthening urban landscape planning: a metapopulation modelling approach

Featured Publications

June 2019 People & Nature

Scale-dependency in drivers of outdoor recreation in England

Why do we want to visit places for outdoor recreation and how can we measure this?

PDF Code Dataset Project Poster Slides DOI
April 2019 Methods in Ecology and Evolution

Incorporating fine‐scale environmental heterogeneity into broad‐extent models

How can we aggregate data avoiding loss of information on fine‐grain heterogeneity?

PDF Code Dataset Project DOI

Recent Publications

Quickly discover relevant content by filtering publications.

Incorporating geodiversity in ecosystem service decisions

A framework for embedding geodiversity into ecosystem services decisions and management
DOI

Scale-dependency in drivers of outdoor recreation in England

Why do we want to visit places for outdoor recreation and how can we measure this?
PDF Code Dataset Project Poster Slides DOI

Ignoring the spatial structure of the sea cucumber Isostichopus fuscus distribution when granting quotas can be costly

There is an increasing demand for fisheries resources worldwide. The brown sea cucumber Isostichopus fuscus is the most valuable species from the Eastern Pacific and it has been almost depleted due to overfishing. Here, we show that it is important to consider the spatial structure of Isostichopus fuscus populations when granting quotas. Given the high levels of illegal fishing within the Gulf of California, it is imperative that quotas are based on the lower bounds of spatially explicit density estimates – along with increased surveillance and enforcement – if the long-term commercial sustainability of the fishery is to be maintained.
PDF Code Dataset DOI

Mapping access to domestic water supplies from incomplete data in developing countries: An illustrative assessment for Kenya

Using species’ distribution modelling methods to map access to water sources.
PDF DOI

Survival estimates of bird species across altered habitats in the tropical Andes

The probability of long‐term persistence of a population is strongly determined by adult survival rates, but estimates of survival are …
PDF Project
See all publications

Popular Topics

blogdown climate-change data-aggregation ecosystem-services flickr geodiversity geosystem-services grainchanger Gulf of California hummingbirds INLA marine protected area MaxEnt metapopultation-modelling recreation scale sea cucumber social media spatial modelling spatial-ecology

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