Research in landscape ecology

Recent research and vision

A recurring theme in my research is how populations and communities are shaped by the landscapes they inhabit. That is, how are populations or communities affected by the quality, availability, and arrangement of habitat in their landscape? Given the rapid pace of global land use and landcover change, such questions are clearly pertinent to conservation. Beyond landscape management, however, such questions are also key to understanding population dynamics in real-world landscapes.

In my doctoral research, I examined the habitat associations of wild bees, and assessed the spatial scale at which they respond to habitat in their landscape (i.e., their “scale of response,” or “scale of effect”). In my previous work, I have studied the effects of forest cover and fragmentation on bee diversity and tick-borne pathogen prevalence.

In my future work, I would like to more concretely connect landscape context to population dynamics. I would be particularly keen to i) more clearly define and measure habitat and habitat quality, such that “landscape context” can be described more directly in terms of specific resources or conditions that affect the focal organisms, and ii) connect those resources and conditions to individual- or population-level processes like survival, reproduction, foraging, or dispersal. For example, how does an organism’s movement abilities and foraging behavior shape its landscape-scale resource requirements? And how does the spatial distribution of those resources affect population size and connectivity?