THE
TEAM
CURRENT MEMBERS
THOMAS WORTHINGTON
Tom is an aquatic ecologist undertaking research in both freshwater and marine environments. Projects are centred on conservation of aquatic organisms and environments at landscape and global scales.
Tom recently completed an analysis of mangrove restoration potential which locates and maps, on a global scale, the places where mangroves can be restored, and calculates the potential benefits from such restoration. The work provides a critical tool for encouraging restoration and enabling robust, data-driven policy changes and investments.
He is currently working on a project to map the distribution of global tidal marshes as a baseline to examine habitat loss, quantify ecosystem service value and determine restoration potential.
MARK SPALDING
Mark has over 30 years of experience working on large-scale mapping of coastal ecosystems. Initially focused on habitat mapping (he published global maps and atlases of coral reefs, mangroves forests, and seagrasses). This work expanded to building maps and models of condition (Reefs at Risk) and conservation effort. Over the last decade, his work has taken a particular focus on modelling and mapping the value of nature to people. Mark led Mapping Ocean Wealth, a global collaboration to utilise existing science and expertise to develop large-scale models of ecosystem services, covering carbon, fisheries enhancement, coastal protection and tourism and recreation. Mark is employed by The Nature Conservancy, but is also an honorary research fellow at the University of Cambridge. He firmly believes that all this modelling requires a grounding in the real world and that we should all get out there and take a look!
LINDSEY SMART
It’s interesting to think that an individual and the decisions that she/he makes have a measurable and inherently spatial impact on the land upon which he/she lives, works, and recreates. It may be easy to think about these effects for a single individual, but the cumulative effects of decisions from an entire population on the landscape is a bit more difficult to understand.
Lindsey employs geospatial modelling and spatial statistics to better understand the complex dynamics of human-environment interactions and their consequences on ecosystem health, social vulnerabilities, and the provision of ecosystem services. The hope is that by providing alternate decision-making scenarios we can inform policy-makers on appropriate solutions for both humans and the environment to best adapt to an ever-changing world.
TANIA L. MAXWELL
Tania is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the team at the University of Cambridge, working on a global and updateable model and map of soil carbon in tidal salt marshes. To do so, she is compiling a global training dataset and will develop the model using R and Google Earth Engine, taking inspiration from previous studies on soil carbon in mangroves globally (Sanderman et al. 2018) and in salt marshes in the US (Holmquist et al. 2018), among others.
Previously, Tania worked on nutrient cycling in forests during her PhD at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) in Bordeaux, and at Laval University in Quebec, Canada. Her professional interests include ecology [forest, soil, coastal], biogeochemistry, global changes, R, data analysis and reproducible coding.
Aside from working and learning, Tania enjoys other nature activities (hiking, camping and backpacking), playing touch rugby, gardening, and biking around.
MIAO LI
Miao is a visiting PhD candidate from Tsinghua University. Her research interest is to quantify the natural disturbance and human activity impacts on land-water interface using multi-source remote sensing data fusion and machine learning algorithms.
She is currently working with the team at the University of Cambridge to extend earlier research by building a longer time-series change map for coastal blue carbon ecosystems. The project aims to identify the drivers of change, pinpoint priority areas for coastal restoration, and estimate blue carbon benefits in East Asia.
FORMER MEMBERS
KATE KINCAID
Kate is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the team at the University of Cambridge, working on mangrove conservation and restoration synthesis work. Her work is collaborative, with a focus on site level through to scaling up globally. Kate’s research is interdisciplinary and focuses on ways to achieve biodiversity conservation along with sustainable livelihoods. She works to align with global sustainable development goals and international policies and conduct research that has an impact beyond academia. Kate has worked with local fishermen in Tanzania, The Bahamas, and Labrador, Canada, seeking to understand the balance between fishing and marine conservation approaches on local communities. She is broadly interested in human-nature connections, ecosystem restoration, and collaborative, interdisciplinary focused conservation research that has an impact on the ground. Her focus is a global-to-local approach - seeking to explore best practice approaches, to meet the future needs of our planet to ensure a sustainable future for our children, and the planet as a whole.
ROWANA WALTON
Rowana is a marine ecologist with a focus on coastal ecosystems and joins the team as a Research Assistant in the Conservation Science Group at the University of Cambridge. Rowana has extensive experience researching a number of tropical coastal ecosystems, examining the role of anthropogenic pressures in recovery and resilience. She is particularly interested in the application of this research into conservation management strategies to ensure that research has a direct positive impact on the ground. Having previously worked for a number of conservation NGOs, Rowana has direct experience of engaging stakeholders and working to empower local communities to take ownership of the protection of coastal ecosystems. Rowana is also a qualified scientific research diver and has extensive experience surveying coastal environments for fauna (e.g. invertebrates, fish), flora (e.g. marine plants, aquatic vegetation), habitat condition and ecological health.