Climate change
Biodiversity
Species on the move
Satellite remote sensing
Institute of Zoology,
Regent's Park,
NW1 4RY,
United Kingdom
My research is at the interface between the biodiversity and climate crises, focussing in particular on the redistribution of species as a result of climate change – one of the most rapid impacts of climate change across the marine, freshwater, and terrestrial realms.
‘Species on the move’ due to climate change is a rapidly developing research field, being one of the mechanisms by which species are able to persist in rapidly changing environments. This reshuffling of biodiversity has wide-reaching ecological and socio-economic consequences, with changing species compositions and knock on effects for ecosystem functioning and provision of ecosystem services.
My work aims to improve our understanding of climate driven species redistribution in order to mitigate ongoing impacts of climate change on biodiversity, focussed on terrestrial invertebrates in the UK.
I aim to investigate the types of species occurrence data available for determining species distributions and monitoring species shifts and discover whether additional information can be gained from emerging citizen-science and social media sources. This should facilitate biodiversity monitoring and identification of species on the move. This work also intends to provide a comprehensive overview of UK invertebrate redistribution that has already occurred under recent rapid climate change, enabling identification of certain species or locations that are most at risk and most in need of conservation efforts. The environmental and socio-economic impacts of these shifts will then be summarised and investigated in order to provide an assessment framework. This should enable more effective management of our UK invertebrate species under future climate risk.
This project is focussed on mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity and understanding of the potential for changing distributions of life on earth and anticipated human implications.
Continued work in this rapidly growing research area is required to understand the divers and consequences of species redistributions driven by climate change. Such efforts can provide the foundation for biodiversity conservation strategies which provide the flexibility to protect species in a rapidly changing and evolving world. Do not hesitate to contact me for any additional details or to discuss my ongoing research.
- 2017-2018: Msc in Environmental Biology: Conservation and Resource Management, Swansea University
- 2014-2018: Bsc in Geography, Swansea University