SURREAL Team
The Surreal Lab research group is a collaborative team built on diverse skills and research. We play to our strengths, support one another, and work together to understand, represent, and simulate complex landscapes.
Chris Bone PhD, Associate Professor and Department Chair
Chris’s teaching and research focus on the use of spatial data science for exploring climate and human-driven natural disturbances and their impacts on diverse human populations.
Jason Kelley, PhD Candidate
Jason utilizes remote sensing and geospatial technologies to improve community driven environmental monitoring. His research is focused on the integration of UAV thermal, optical, and laser scanning data to develop a salmon habitat monitoring program in the Lower Fraser, Skeena, and Okanagan waterways.
Elicia Bell, PhD Candidate
Elicia’s research explores human-carnivore dynamics through integrated socio-ecological frameworks. Her work focuses on understanding how behavioural ecology research frameworks can be combined with socio-cultural dimension of human-wildlife interactions in order to better understand coexistence mechanisms.
Leah Fulton, PhD Candidate
Leah is a coastal planner and cartographer focusing her research on understanding how representations of the coastal environment influence perceptions of wellbeing. With an interdisciplinary lens, Leah aims to integrate community knowledge and technologically derived data.
Olympia Koziatek, PhD Candidate
Olympia’s research explores simulation modeling of complex natural disaster systems using geospatial and emerging technologies. She is interested in bridging the gap between research and practice by developing accessible decision-support tools for industry during disaster events, including extreme heat, wildfires, pandemics, and other emerging risks.
Lilly Lecanu-Fayet, MSc Student
Lilly’s research investigates the integration of multiple forms of knowledge into corridor models in southern Vancouver Island, and how these models can be used to reduce habitat fragmentation. This project is part of the ongoing Sooke Hills Wildlife Monitoring Project.
Larissa Bron, MSc Student
Larissa’s research investigates how fire and vegetation in oak-associated ecosystems has changed over the past 10,000 years using paleoecological approaches. Larissa’s reconstructed fire histories are grounded in respect for the long-term stewardship by Indigenous Peoples and the rich biodiversity of these landscapes.
Connor Monk, Undergraduate Research Assistant
Connor’s work is focused on the Sooke Hills Wilderness Project, where he analyzes human-wildlife interactions through the use of camera-traps located within the Sooke Hills Wilderness Area and the adjacent Greater Victoria Watershed Area.
Hannah Friesen, Undergraduate Research Assistant
Hannah’s works on developing a deep learning image-tagging protocol for wildlife camera traps used in the Sooke Hills Wilderness Project. The output images will be used to create wildlife corridor maps of the Sooke Hills Wilderness Area and the adjacent Greater Victoria Watershed Area.