Hi. I study the spatial ecology of wildlife.  The last several years I've been lucky enough to work with the highly charismatic grizzly bear.  Studying this umbrella species has provided great training in a variety of field work as well as habitat, autocorrelation, and spatial mark-recapture analysis techniques.  In the long-term I'd like to work as a research scientist for USGS or possibly a state wildlife agency. 

I'm currently working on a PhD at Northern Arizona University with Paul Beier.    I am using genetic data to link habitat use and connectivity to bear abundance and distribution in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE).  I'm tackling 3 primary questions:

1) Why are there many bears in some parts of the ecosystem and few bears in others?

2) Is fragmentation increasing or decreasing in the NCDE? 

3) When do we have to assess the influence of scale in our analyses of animal abundance?

The Northern Divide Grizzly Bear Project (NDGBP) was initiated to estimate the number of grizzly bears in the 8-million-acre NCDE study area in northwestern Montana. We collected 33,000 hair samples in 2004 from hair snares and rub trees.  This yielded  genotypes for 545 individual grizzly bears, creating a  genetic spatial and temporal record of individual animals that is ideal for answering my questions. 

I am using a  hierarchical Bayesian framework and simulations to answer these questions. Additional questions of interest include:

How can we include spatial autocorrelation in models of the number of bears in a local area?

What is the best approach for incorporating multiple scales of habitat selection into models of the number of bears using an area?  

My PhD work is supported by an IGERT fellowship, NAU-School of Forestry, USGS, and partners of the NDGBP. 

My long term research goals include assessing threats to grizzly bears.  I'd like to examine the potential impact of changes in habitat and management on grizzly bears.  Important sources of change in vegetation type and structure will likely include 1) climate change, via changes in disturbances such as fire and avalanches,  and 2)human development, via changes in numbers of homes and roads.   The shapes and configurations of these will influence bear viability in the future.  Although we expect an increase in human development, we may be able to mitigate some of these negative impacts through careful land planning to maintain connectivity and improved education and knowledge for people sharing habitat with bears.  Understanding the interplay of these various forces will help guide appropriate management.