Who we are
Dr. Casey Ryan, Professor in Land System Science at the University of Edinburgh, School of GeoSciences.
Researchers
Penny Mograbi: SEOSAW project officer. Penny runs the Edinburgh branch of the SEOSAW office.
Sam Harrison: Sam works as part of the SECO project, with a focus on spatial analyses of the carbon cycle in the dry tropics.
Reza Mohammadi Asiyabi: SECO and NCEO funded post doc with a focus on biomass mapping using remote sensing and deep learning.
Helen Hughes: Knowledge Transfer Associate working on soil carbon modelling in agroforestry systems, in collaboration with Plan Vivo.
Ellen Heimpel: Researcher on the new NERC-funded project: “Resolving the drivers of restoration effectiveness and leakage in wooded savannas”.
Paula McGregor: Paula works on a project evaluating the outcomes of carbon offset projects.
Current PhD students
Lorena’s project explores fragmentation in African savannas, address our knowledge gap first by quantifying fragmentation, intactness, and connectivity in African savannas and determining how these processes impact the survival of animals, ecosystem services such as climate regulation and carbon sequestration, and the livelihoods of people
Matus Seci. Project: A global understanding of forest-savanna transitions
Thomas Malima. The demography of trees in SE Tanzania (main supervisor Wilson Mugasha, SUA)
Emmanuel Oduro Takyi. Climate sensitivity of the dry topical carbon sink (main supervisor, Carla Staver, Princeton)
Oliver McFarlane: Modelling radar-vegetation interaction in the dry tropics (main supervisor, Steve Hancock, Edinburgh)
Lennart Hoheisel: Statistical modelling to improve woody biomass mapping from remote sensing (main supervisor, Nicole Agustine, Edinburgh).
Annie Gregoire: Food systems and the environment (main supervisor: Alfy Gathorne-Hardy, Edinburgh)
Rachel Selman: Soil diversity changes in response to drought in the Amazon rainforest (main supervisor, Patrick Meir, Edinburgh)
Some (not all) past members
Lucy Wells. Lucy worked on the biogeography of savannas and dry forests, with a focus on areas of conservation concern. Lucy was part of the SENSE CDT.
Chris Andrews. Project: Socio-ecological landscape dynamics in the headwaters of the Okavango (with the National Geographic Foundation).
James Robinson (main supervisor, Antje Ahrends, RBGE).
James’s PhD research explored stakeholder discourses regarding livestock encroachment into community-managed village forest reserves in Kilwa District, south-east Tanzania. He collaborated with a filmmaker to produce a documentary, Cattle in the Community Forest, which highlights the contrasting perspectives of stakeholders on the subject.
Mathew Rees: Diversity and biogeography of dry forests and savannas (main supervisor, Kyle Dexter, Turin / Edinburgh)
Luisa Fernanda Escobar Alvarado. Project: Socio-ecological landscape dynamics in the headwaters of the Okavango (main supervisor, Kyle Dexter, Turin / Edinburgh)
Wanting Yang: Visiting student from U. Copenhagen mapping shifting cultivation.
Robert Davies: Diversity and functional traits in southern African savannas (main supervisor: Dave Edwards, Cambridge)
Peter worked on the operational integration of remote sensing into the analysis of rural poverty by using high-resolution satellite imagery and relating this to measures of wellbeing derived from household survey datasets in southern Mozambique. The objective was to explore the role that remote sensing can play in improving the monitoring of socioeconomic conditions in rural spaces. Peter is also working with the Ecosystem Services and Management Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).
Alice Farrelly. Project: The socio-ecology of woodfuels in sub-Saharan Africa
Sam Bowers
Sam developed tools for monitoring forest change across Africa, part of the SMFM project, funded by the World Bank. He worked with colleagues in Zambia and Mozambique to develop tools to monitor dry forests, savannas and woodlands with remote sensing. Full details here.
Bowy den Braber
Bowy worked on the SEOSAW project, focused on the spatial patterns of the floristic composition of the woodlands of southern Africa and how to map them.
Thom Brade
Thom’s project aimed to assess the drivers of spatial and temporal patterns of biomass change in the Miombo woodlands of south-eastern Africa with a particular interest in areas showing a trend of increasing biomass. As part of his PhD he conducted a placement with Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique.
Brigadier Libanda
Brig was a PhD student studying tree growth rates across southern Africa, as part of the SEOSAW project.
Ellie studied degradation and fire socio-ecology in rural Tanzania. The miombo woodlands she worked in directly support local livelihoods as well as being globally-important carbon stores and sources of biodiversity. Ellie used social and natural science methods to study causes of woodland degradation, such as fire, and their impacts on ecosystem services to inform effective and equitable conservation. She has also undertaken work with Tree Aid as part of her PhD.
Paula Nieto Quintano
Paula finished a PhD where she set up a fire experiment in the Bateke Plateau, in the Republic of Congo, to understand the floristic composition, carbon storage, woody cover and fire regime of that mesic savanna-forest mosaic ecosystem. Her PhD was funded by the US Forest Service and the University of Edinburgh, supported by WCS Congo.
She then worked as a research assistant with TreeAID, an organisation that works on the potential of trees to reduce poverty and protect the environment in drylands in Africa. Her research explores the use of open access remote sensing approaches to develop a method to quantify the impact of TreeAID´s work on carbon stocks in forest sites in Burkina Faso. Additionally, she will assist with measurement protocols for the establishment and monitoring of permanent plots for TreeAID’s projects.
Geoff studied adaptive management and the social-ecological drivers of tree biomass and diversity in smallholder agroforestry schemes in the tropics (Mexico, Mozambique and Uganda). He used mixed-methods research using tree measurements, environmental data and social surveys/interviews.
Shawn Schneidereit
As a final year undergraduate, Shawn was a research assistant in the CycleEx project, which aims to quantify the impact of cyclone Idai on savanna-dry forest systems.
Photo by Peter Hargreaves.
Comments are closed
Comments to this thread have been closed by the post author or by an administrator.