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Research Scientist, Terrestrial Systems Ecology
Ontario Forest Research Institute Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Florida Postdoctoral Researcher, Memorial University of Newfoundland (with full time visitation at University of Colorado and National Ecological Observatory Network) Ph.D., University of Alberta M.Sc., Memorial University of Newfoundland H.B.Sc., Trent University |
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I am a generalist ecologist with interests in biodiversity, biogeography, macroecology, conservation biology, community ecology, ecoinformatics, phylogenetic ecology, and ecological scaling. I aim broadly to contribute to answering fundamental ecological questions, often with relevant societal applications to issues like land use planning, conservation, and climate change. I have investigated individual organisms, populations, communities, and continental ecosystems.
My collaborators and I currently study:
My Ph.D. focused on broad scale community structure and diversity of boreal vascular plants in response to human land use. Some elements of that research include the diversity-disturbance relationship, scales at which human disturbance impacts species diversity, relative roles of environmental filtering, competition, and dispersal on plant communities in landscapes along a continuum of disturbance, and impacts of disturbance on phylogenetic and phenotypic trait similarity.
I employ field observation, geospatial and temporal analyses, modelling, quantitative analyses, "big data", and controlled experiments, depending on the question. Spatial scaling, and increasingly temporal scaling, features prominently in my work. Despite a quantitative background, I strive for simplicity in approach, analyses and explanations.
My work has occurred in terrestrial systems, and often in the taiga, but I am interested in a wide variety of systems and enjoy ecological comparisons across disparate ecosystems (e.g. boreal vs. tropical, terrestrial vs. marine, plant vs. animal), believing ecological theory should be broadly applicable, or at least informative when it is not.
I also enjoy playing outside!
My collaborators and I currently study:
- Cumulative effects of climate change and anthropogenic disturbance on biodiversity and community ecology
- Drivers of diversification in Amazonia, by integrating ecology and phylogeography
- The phenology of migratory birds in relation to climate change by uniting citizen science data with satellite data at a continental scale.
My Ph.D. focused on broad scale community structure and diversity of boreal vascular plants in response to human land use. Some elements of that research include the diversity-disturbance relationship, scales at which human disturbance impacts species diversity, relative roles of environmental filtering, competition, and dispersal on plant communities in landscapes along a continuum of disturbance, and impacts of disturbance on phylogenetic and phenotypic trait similarity.
I employ field observation, geospatial and temporal analyses, modelling, quantitative analyses, "big data", and controlled experiments, depending on the question. Spatial scaling, and increasingly temporal scaling, features prominently in my work. Despite a quantitative background, I strive for simplicity in approach, analyses and explanations.
My work has occurred in terrestrial systems, and often in the taiga, but I am interested in a wide variety of systems and enjoy ecological comparisons across disparate ecosystems (e.g. boreal vs. tropical, terrestrial vs. marine, plant vs. animal), believing ecological theory should be broadly applicable, or at least informative when it is not.
I also enjoy playing outside!
