ABOUT ME
I received my undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2008. I worked at several nonprofit conservation organizations across the country and at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources before pursuing my graduate degree with my advisor Dr. John Faaborg. I completed my PhD in Ecology at the University of Missouri in May of 2016.
I am currently working as a quantitative wildlife biologist with the Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station in Oregon. Additionally, in December 2020 I became the data coordinator for a long-term, large-scale autonomous passive acoustic monitoring program, focused on the Northern Spotted Owl range.
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EDUCATION
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BS Biology 2008 University of Wisconsin, Madison
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PhD Biological Sciences 2016 University of Missouri, Columbia
RESEARCH INTERESTS
I am broadly interested in understanding population ecology and the evolution of animal behaviors. I am very interested in utilizing quantitative models that can inform conservation and wildlife management decisions.
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Northern Spotted Owl Ecology
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I have been working with the northern spotted owl long-term research team since 2016. The northern spotted owl has been the focus of intense study and public interest since the early 1990s when the demographic monitoring program was established along with the Northwest Forest Plan. The overarching purpose of this research is to understand the effectiveness of federal forest management, especially for maintaining and restoring conditions necessary to support viable populations of spotted owls on federally-administered lands.
We track status and trends of spotted owl populations primarily by collecting data to quantify territorial occupancy, survival, reproductive success, and annual rate of population change. We quantify the effects of trends in the amount and distribution of suitable forest and other components of spotted owl habitat such as presence of barred owls and prey species.
My past projects include incorporating remotely sensed
forest structure metrics into models of resource partitioning by
Northern Spotted Owls and Barred Owls (go to paper) and investigating breeding dispersal patterns in Northern Spotted owls (go to paper).
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We are currently expanding our monitoring efforts to include bioacoustics, which is a fast-growing area of wildlife research useful for studying rare, cryptic species that vocalize.
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Postfledging Juvenile Songbird Ecology
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The postfledging period, after fledging and before migration, is a critical stage for Neotropical migrant songbirds, with high rates of mortality and shifting resource requirements. However information regarding this period remains vague or absent for all but a few species.
For my PhD research, I conducted a radio-telemetry study of postfledging Ovenbirds (Seiurus aurocapilla) and Acadian Flycatchers (Empidonax virescens) in mature-forest fragments from 2012 to 2015 in Missouri, USA.
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