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NOTE: Location change to EOW 430.

Abstract

Ecosystems and biodiversity are increasingly being impacted by human activities. Detecting and understanding changes in biodiversity is a challenge for a couple of reasons. 1) Transcending the results of an individual study or site within a limited time span requires data compilation and harmonisation. Enter: biodiversity synthesis and meta science. 2) Our understanding of ecosystems and biodiversity depends on how we count stuff. Enter: Bioinformatics for biodiversity. 3) Species and individuals move around, and species assemblages change through both space and time. Enter: Scale. In this talk, I will summarise some essential aspects to these three issues in light of multiple global change drivers that might be affecting interdependent measures of biodiversity independently or interactively. Next, I will demonstrate how the research groups I am apart of are collectively trying to employ and develop the best associated quantitative approaches to the synthesis of biodiversity science.

Bio:

Dr. Emma Ladouceur is an interdisciplinary Canadian postdoctoral researcher from a small village outside of Ottawa, who has been studying and working abroad for thirteen years. She completed a Bachelor of Urban & Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson), and worked in City & Environmental Planning in the non-profit, private, and public sector in Canada before leaving to complete a MSc in Conservation Biology from University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. She then worked in the Australian restoration research and industry before moving to the Italian Alps to complete a Marie Skłodowska-Curie-Funded PhD on the restoration of European alpine grasslands. After that, she moved to Leipzig, to work in the Biodiversity Synthesis and Physiological Diversity groups at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). At iDiv she works on the synthesis of disturbance, biodiversity change, and ecosystem functioning with both the Biological and Computer science schools at Martin Luther University. For the last few years she has been building a global database and network of vegetation monitoring data from ecological restoration projects around the world. Since the launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, she has been engaged across Europe in policy meetings on conservation and restoration priorities, discussing the links between data-driven research and policy decision-making. Emma also serves on the editorial board of the journal Conservation Letters, which focuses on  policy-relevant conservation science that transcends international borders.