Our Research.

 

ECOPLAN

Evaluating Co-Design for People, Land-Use, and Nature

Preventing biodiversity loss and maintaining ecosystem functioning on Earth is one of the grand challenges facing humankind, but developing a better scientific understanding of climate change is only part of the challenge. We must couple strong science and technological advances with effective decision making that uses that science in order to benefit conservation and climate action. Our team works at the interface of the social and environmental systems to co-design land use planning solutions that benefit both humans and nature. This project is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

 

Forecasting Biodiversity into the Future

There is an urgent need to understand how biodiversity on the planet will change in the future. This task requires predicting which species are at risk of extinction and how they will respond to climate change. The biodiversity and biosphere forecasting institute (BioFI) is comprised of diverse group of ecologists, geographers, computer scientists, and engineers working to understand how Earth’s biodiversity will respond to these changes using big environmental data, advanced computing, and machine learning/AI.

 

The role of land-use change in coral reef functioning

Research is increasingly showing that land-based nutrients (from agriculture, sewage, and livestock rearing) and sediments can compromise coral health and reduce coral resilience to climate change impacts. However, the role of land-based pollution in the widespread loss of corals remains underexplored due to a lack of reef water quality monitoring. Working in the Caribbean, we are working to track long-term land use changes through remote sensing analysis and link them to coral health, water quality, and reef ecosystem functioning over the past century.

Computational Landscape Ecology

We work at the interface of computational spatial science and landscape ecology to develop new methods for analyzing landscape patterns and processes and scale those methods from plots to landscapes, regions, and beyond.

 

Drones

Unpiloted aircraft systems, or drones, are rapidly becoming a critical tool in ecosystem monitoring and biodiversity response. We develop the basic foundational science needed to apply these tools to conservation issues and use them for a range of environmental applications.