Sophie McSherry

Reconstructing past environmental change in the Caribbean islands to obtain environmental baselines to inform ecosystem restoration and rewilding.

The Caribbean Island region has experienced dramatic environmental change, with different waves of human colonisation and changing anthropogenic land-use driving widespread ecosystem state shifts. However, we currently lack the spatial and temporal understanding of historical distributions of Caribbean ecosystems and biodiversity, and their change and loss through time, needed to identify key drivers of change and guide conservation decision-making. 

Unpicking long-term drivers of local extinction through reconstructing former ecosystem distributions and functions is required to inform future targeted landscape planning, and the potential for rewilding and restoration of these global-priority tropical island systems.