Portfolio

Audubon’s Birds and Offshore Wind Report: Developing the Offshore Wind Birds Need was a collaborative effort across the Audubon network to demonstrate our commitment to using the best available science to advance responsible offshore wind development while protecting birds and the places they need in a changing climate.

I mapped areas in which the National Audubon Society is actively engaging in offshore wind development as well as a case-study in the Gulf of Maine to show how Audubon engages.

I led the development of a technical report for Hammonasset Beach State Park, Connecticut. The report was developed to guide coastal resiliency conversations on monitoring, restoring, and conserving Hammonasset's park amenities and coastal wetlands.

In collaboration with Shannon Reault, Specialist of Climate Science, we assessed how sea level rise is predicted to impact park infrastructure and salt marshes.

See also

I collaborated with Emma Spence, the Field Program Manager of the Plowright Lab at Cornell University, to design a study area map for a keynote talk given by Raina Plowright at the Wildlife Disease Association on July 30th, 2023. The map depicts the distribution of documented Hendra virus spillover events in the Australia Subtropics with prospective sampling locations for fieldwork.

As a Research Fellow with the Sub-Antarctic Biocultural Conservation Program, I actively collected field data for spatial and statistical analysis in the southernmost forests of the world (55-56°S), at Omora Ethnobotanical Park and Yendegaia National Park, to investigate the influence forests and wetlands have on avian populations in the context of global climate change.

Carbon analysis was conducted using forest inventory data to assess the relationship between carbon storage and avian richness using point counts. The prevalence of avian malaria was detected using DNA extraction of blood samples and PCR amplification. The research supports policymaking in the UNESCO Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve.

As an author on a publication in prep, Tiger (Panthera tigris) Endangerment: Positive Responses to Global Conservation Efforts, I reviewed pertinent literature for fecundity and survivorship data for a population viability analysis of 3 distinct tiger subpsecies: Amur (P.t. altacia), Bengal (P.t. tigris), and Sunda (P.t. sumatrae).

Tiger populations had a positive growth rate, indicating positive responses to the Global Tiger Recovery Program, an effort to double the number of wild tigers by 2022. This research supports the recent IUCN Tiger Program Phase I report that populations have increased ~40% since 2015.

For my undergraduate research at Central Michigan University, The Steppingstones of Dispersal in Felidae, I reviewed pertinent literature to collect dispersal data for nine species of endangered, vulnerable, and near threatened big cats. I used spatial and statistical analysis to measure the dispersal distance between fragmented populations and determine the degree to which populations were connected or isolated.

I developed critical troubleshooting skills in ArcGIS and gained a fundamental understanding of how powerful geospatial technologies are to support landscape-scale conservation efforts.

Given the uncertainty of global land cover dataset accuracy among regions, I classified land covers for three landscapes in my MS thesis, Conservation, Connectivity, and Coexistence: Understanding Corridor Efficacy in Fragmented Landscapes using false composite satellite imagery.

Accuracy assessments were conducted using 500 random sample points with an overall 92%, 95%, and 95%, accuracy for Kansas, Idaho, and Czechia, respectively. Land cover layers were used to quantify the structural composition and configuration of landscapes as well as further spatial analysis modeling functional landscape connectivity.

Habitat quality and quantity provide species the resources to survive and reproduce. As part of my MS thesis, Conservation, Connectivity, and Coexistence: Understanding Corridor Efficacy in Fragmented Landscapes, I quantified habitat for the white-footed mouse (PELE), western harvest mouse ( REME), and yellow-necked mouse (APFL) within landscape elements.

I used previously classified land cover layers to assess the relationship between the proportion of species captured and the percent of habitat available within (a) corridor complexes, (b) corridors, (c; d) patches 1 and 2, (e) reference areas, and (f; g) isolates.