My research centres around three core themes:
- Using freely and globally available data and software to predict where tropical species are most at risk of human exploitation;
- Simulating the outcomes of natural resources management (including wild meat and fisheries);
- Applying formal decision-making tools like Bayesian decision networks to assess the tradeoffs in management, its susceptability to uncertainties, and its effects on people who depend on wild resources.
Spatial Mapping of Bushmeat Hunting
I use circuit-based movement simulations to predict where bushmeat hunting effort is concentrated in understudied and remote tropical forests. Combining globally available geospatial data, open-source movement model software, and camera trap images of human hunters in tropical forests, I assess whether simple movement models can mimic foraging patterns of otherwise untrackable wild meat hunters.
Bayesian Decision Analysis and MSE for Resources Management
I am interested not only in capturing where hunting occurs, but also what management options can meet the needs of forest dwelling peoples without threatening vulnerable tropical species. Sustainable management is incredibly difficult to attain, however, especially in understudied and inaccessible tropical forests.
Many tropical forest-dwelling peoples have used and continue to use time- and space-based hunting management to prevent overexploitation of wildlife. One such method in Malaysia - tagal hutan - has been offered as a sustainable way to harvest forest products including meat. Using dynamic and spatially explicit population-harvest simulations of wild meat hunting, I how ecological conditions, hunter behaviour, and tagal hutan management strategies influence the sustainability of spatial hunting closures.
Undergraduate Honours Thesis
Functional Diversity in South Pacific Coral Reef Fish Communities
More on the way…
Other Research Projects
Transparency in Fisheries Decision Making
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PVAInvasR and Shiny
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