Welcome to my research homepage. Here you will find information regarding my research interests and experience in Quantitative Ecology. I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Biological Sciences Department of the University of Alberta.
I am interested in looking at how large-scale patterns form in ecological systems and what role these patterns play in the development and/or dynamics of communities. I would like to look at how ecological communities interact and form working, functional units at a higher level of spatial detail.
I think that the application of complex systems theory to ecological problems may provide the framework for many new ecological analysis and modelling tools that will be applicable in many fields of ecology. The generalities between systems that could be uncovered might provide powerful new insights into the formation of patterns in ecological assemblages.
I think that by understanding the patterns (how they form, relationships between basic ecological units affecting their formation) we will be able improve our understanding of how patterns may form under conditions that we cannot currently observe in nature. This could lead to powerful predictive/scenario-testing models for the future where disturbed ecosystems may form different, previously unknown patterns, because of different spatial interactions.
My current research focuses on investigating and developing new methods of spatial structure characterization. The detection of spatial structure is one first step in the process of detecting and characterizing an underlying process(es) and/or making predictions regarding that process or the spatial structure. If no spatial structure can be detected (i.e., everything is random), the observer cannot make predictions about the structure (except that it is random), nor can the observer infer much about underlying processes.
Ecologists have access to increasing volumes of spatial data as technological tools are targeted toward the observation of ecological systems (GIS, digital imaging, computer models and simulations). One first step in examining this, or any, spatial data is to examine it for types of spatial structure (i.e., some recognizable pattern).