I am interested in the synthesis, analysis, and application of information on species’ habitat relationships and distributions for wildlife conservation and management. My work has included measuring the effects of off-road vehicle traffic on shorebird habitat use and behavior; identifying spatial and temporal trends in bird abundance on a barrier island during fall migration; writing habitat conservation recommendations for planners, developers, and managers; exploring patterns in potential losses and gains in wildlife habitat resulting from anticipated bioenergy production in North Carolina; linking projected landscape changes induced by European demand for wood pellets to patterns in wildlife biodiversity; developing novel, multispecies metrics of landscape pattern; and synthesizing data for coarse-scale maps of terrestrial wildlife habitat in the United States as part of the USGS National Gap Analysis Project. I have also contributed to projects that examined the use of urban greenways by breeding and migrating birds, mapped landbird migration stopover sites with radar imagery, and assessed methods to improve the accuracy and precision of auditory bird surveys. I seek opportunities to employ sampling design concepts, geospatial and statistical analyses, scientific programming, and database development in ways that provide context and answers for conservation and management questions.
My interest in ornithology and ecology began under the instruction of Dr. Lynn Moseley while at Guilford College. I later earned a master’s degree under Dr. Theodore R. Simons in the USGS NC Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research unit at NC State where I have worked since 2004, and in 2019 I was promoted to Research Scholar. I have developed a diverse skill set from my professional and volunteer experiences that includes programming geospatial data manipulation, analysis, and visualization with Python, R, and SQL; databases creation and management; visual and auditory identification of eastern North American birds; and methods for sampling avian habitat use, abundance, and behavior. I continuously strive to better understand the complexities of wildlife and landscape ecology and the advances in the methods and tools used to study them.
Biodiversity and Spatial Information Center