I’m an applied conservation ecologist, which basically means that I do scientific work to solve a problem or answer a question that comes from the natural resource management community. Usually, that involves at least two of three things: birds, wetlands or decision making.
As an ornithologist, I model the migratory connectivity of birds and work to better understand when they migrate and where. My favorite birds, hands down, are the rails.
As an quantitative ecologist, I use complex statistical models to account for the natural variation in the system to better understand if the management action or process at hand is influencing things.
As a field ecologist, I spend a lot of time getting ATVs unstuck, and fixing them, while also designing new survey methodologies for some of the most elusive birds.
As a collaborator, I believe in transparent reproducible science but even more I believe in collaborative science. I believe in science that engages the people who will be using the results to inform their decisions, be they funding decision makers or wetland managers. I want to do good science, but even more I want that science to be useful. I have extensive experience leading teams across organizational, discipline and political boundaries.
As a passionate advocate for a more diverse scientific community I am always interested in studying the impacts of our assumptions in the scientific career path. Currently this focuses on the impacts of unpaid labor.
