ECOSYSTEMS STUDENTS

Tash's research uses remote sensing and modelling to estimate fuel loads and predict fire probability across different vegetation types in the Brazilian Cerrado and the temperate and savanna ecosystems of Australia. Her research investigates how ecosystem structure and functioning may change in response to increased drought and fire occurrence. Tash holds a BSc with Honours in Environmental Science and Economics from the University of Western Australia, and an MPhil in Environmental Change and Management from Oxford University. In the past, she has worked as an environmental consultant and analyst in Australia. She attends Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

Paola’s doctoral research focuses on the relationships among place-based nature recovery schemes in Mexico funded by the federal government, local mangrove conservation and management initiatives to boost sustainable livelihoods, efforts to promote and enhance community governance, and participatory nature conservation decision-making processes. Specifically, her work explores the mechanisms and outcomes of community-based mangrove recovery approaches. “Conserving, restoring, and sustainably managing mangrove ecosystems can figure prominently in climate change mitigation/adaptation and biodiversity conservation strategies of countries hosting extensive mangrove areas. Nevertheless, there is insufficient knowledge about mangrove degradation status, recovery rates, and the contributions of community-based recovery initiatives.” She aims to fill these knowledge gaps by conducting participatory and collaborative transdisciplinary applied research that draws on natural, social and humanity sciences quantitative and qualitative methods to better appreciate and highlight the socio-cultural, environmental, and economic benefits of community-based mangrove recovery and the co-creation of knowledge. Her research is guided by the needs and aspirations of the local communities she is working with a purpose to continuing building meaningful partnerships and efforts across government programmes and movements pursuing environmental and social justice, system transformational changes, and equity and rights for local communities and Indigenous Peoples.

Jed is passionate about ecological restoration and rewilding, and the intersection this shares with agriculture to improve outcomes for both people and the planet. He is currently working to understand the community structure and differing guilds of mycorrhiza between agricultural and rewilded plots, and how this might influence future efforts and decision making in conservation. Jed holds a BA in Geography from the University of Cambridge, and prior to beginning Oxford worked in circular economy, consulting on reusable packaging design and managing C-suite stakeholders. In his spare time, Jed is also a keen gardener and forager who loves to share his passions with anyone who’s keen to listen!

Shiyang is passionate about interdisciplinary research, with a focus on spatial ecological modelling across scales, from global to local. His research interests span land-use, biodiversity, climate, food systems, genomics, and genetics. Currently, Shiyang is working on a project that explores landscape connectivity for British biodiversity in the context of climate change. He seeks to address key questions such as: What are the expected outcomes under climate change with a steady-state landscape? What role does connectivity play in this context? And how can we enhance connectivity to link the right areas effectively? Before joining Oxford, Shiyang earned a master’s degree in Data Science from UCL, where he also completed his undergraduate studies in Mathematics.

Tanaya (she/her) is an ecologist and artist from India. Her research interests in biodiversity resilience and nature recovery expand across scales (from fine scale to macro scale) and biomes. She is reading a DPhil in Geography and Environment at University of Oxford on a project that characterises microclimates in mixed tree and grass ecosystems in India and Africa to better understand how we can manage these vulnerable landscapes and the species that inhabit them. Tanaya is most herself when she is outdoors looking for birds and plants, hovering over a coral reef with a magnifying glass, or walking long distances across forests and grasslands. She is actively researching and workshopping how art and science can come together to roll out research more meaningfully and urgently in the world.

With an extensive knowledge and interest in the application of Local Ecological Knowledge in natural resources management, Sulemana’s DPhil seeks to understand the relevance and contribution of indigenous knowledge systems to contemporary Nature-based Solutions, and the application of acoustic and remote sensing technology to the measurement of ecosystem recovery. He will employ camera traps and soundscape measurements to identify patterns in species recovery and biodiversity shifts across different nature recovery interventions while investigating the strengths and limitations of bioacoustic monitoring vs. traditional survey methods at spatial and temporal scales. Sulemana Bawa has a background in conservation biology with substantial research experience in ornithology, herpetology and freshwater ecology. Prior to his studies at Oxford, he has led rewilding initiatives and developed community-based biomonitoring approaches for collaborative resource management in Ghana.

Emily's research is divided into three main lines of inquiry: firstly to examine to what extent total above-ground biomass can be predicted by metrics of structural complexity across both wet and dry tropical forests worldwide, secondly to examine whether there is an abiotic tipping point in soil fungal and bacterial composition between tropical forests and savannas in West Africa, and lastly to examine what type of relationships exists between the structure and function of these above and below ground communities when analyzing both alpha and beta diversity in Ghana. Prior to this degree, she completed her MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation, and Management at Oxford, writing a dissertation following the same research focus, and as an undergraduate she attended Barnard College of Columbia University, where she studied environmental science, human rights, and Spanish. Outside of academics, she is a Junior Dean at Harris Manchester College and spends most of her free time rowing, whether racing for City of Oxford Rowing Club, managing Linacre Boat Club, or coaching Somerville College Boat Club.

Pranay is a DPhil student in the Interdisciplinary Life and Environmental Science Landscape Award (ILESLA) programme at the University of Oxford. He is passionate about studying and sharing the importance of soil microbial communities. Particularly, he is interested in understanding the combined effects of climate change and human land-use on soil microbiota. During his DPhil, Pranay aims to investigate the energy flow through microbial systems across different soil environments. This would help assess the impacts of anthropogenic activities on microbial communities and associated loss of functionality. Through his work, Pranay wants to work towards improving soil microbial representation in global biodiversity frameworks.

Aryaman's DPhil project investigates how ecosystem-climate feedback loops emerge (in deep time) and are maintained (in the present). He is interested in how the climate is shaped by (and shapes) interactions between ecosystem engineers, and how organisms acting selfishly emergently form persistent biosphere-scale feedback systems. With Yadvinder, Aryaman will specifically work on how mycorrhizal symbiosis in forest ecosystems shapes the capacity of trees and fungi to influence precipitation and cloud-formation via biotic aerosol prodiction and evapotranspiration. Using a combination of climate modelling, satellite and biodiversity data of the Amazon rainforest, he will perform computational experiments to examine the the role that mycorrhizal symbiosis has on the capacity of the Amazon to drive precipitation patterns.