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  • Ecosystems and environmental management

Ecosystems and environmental management

These pages hold legacy content of completed research. Our new online home with details of our most recent achievements is the Ecology, Conservation and Zoonosis Research and Enterprise Group on the university research portal.

For a list of all university research groups and centres, visit the University of Brighton's page on organisational research units.  

Our research integrates ecology, physical geography, biology, remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and applies these to freshwater, marine and terrestrial ecosystems to inform environmental management in a changing world. We focus on:

  • human impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity, including climate change
  • species ecology, interactions and behaviour
  • molecular ecology and conservation biology
  • microbiology and zoonotic disease
  • marine, freshwater and wetland ecosystems
  • applications of remote sensing and GIS for disease movement, landscape/environmental management and modelling.

Our inter-disciplinary research group is comprised of three complementary themes:

  • Geospatial data and remote sensing
  • Ecology and conservation
  • Zoonotic disease.
Maintaining stocks of biodiversity and natural capital allow the sustained provision of future flows of ecosystem services, and thereby help to ensure enduring human well-being. Sustaining these flows also requires a good understanding of how ecosystems function and provide services, and how they are likely to be affected by various pressures. Insights from the natural sciences are essential to understanding the links between biodiversity and the supply of ecosystem services, including ecosystem resilience – i.e. their capacity to continue to provide services under changing conditions, notably climate change.

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), 2010

Geospatial data and remote sensing

The collection and interpretation of geospatial data is central to activities of Geographers, Ecologists, Geologists, and Environmental Scientists, whether on computers or in the field. Our use of remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) combine field data collection and geographical methodologies with cutting edge technology and computer-based information systems. These serve to process information we collect, in particular to visualise and analyse spatial and temporal differences in observational data.

Within our research group we focus on environmental and ecological data acquired through many means including GPS, Radar, Lidar, Sonar, Electro-Optical Imaging, Thermal Imaging, Aerial photography, Spectroscopy, Geomagnetism, and essential ground validation measurements. These data are collected and analysed to support research in a variety of fields including, but not restricted to, Archaeology, Environmental Science, Ecology, Geography, Geology, Geomorphology and Land-cover/Land-use change.

The research group comprises a multi-disciplinary team of scientists with expertise in active and passive remote sensing, physics, engineering, ecology, GIS, and the use of Small Unmanned Aircraft. Our activities revolve around the central themes of data acquisition and interpretation to overcome real world problems and deliver solutions.

Examples of our work include seabed habitat mapping using multibeam acoustic data and GIS, historical landscape modelling, forest radar backscatter modelling, lidar/radar fusion to determine vertical forest canopy structure, leaf area index estimation, remote monitoring of gully erosion, channel patterns, dynamics and hydraulic connectivity of the world’s largest rivers, characterisation of Shuttle Radar Topography Mission digital elevation model (SRTM DEM) slope dependence, and impacts of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission.

Geospatial data and remote sensing research projects

Managed-Retreat

Using remote sensing and geostatistical techniques for marine and coastal habitat mapping

remote-sensing-aerial-photo

Remote sensing to establish forest dynamics and structure

environmental-sensors-group

Environmental applications for sensor capabilities and technologies

Ecology and conservation

Our research is aimed at understanding the influence of humans on ecosystems and biodiversity, within landscapes, communities, species and populations. The theme consists of experts in a variety of ecosystems, including freshwater, coastal, marine and terrestrial, and taxonomic groups, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates and plants. Our researchers are assessing species and community diversity and distributions, and genetic diversity within species, to determine conservation status and extinction risk. We investigate the effects of habitat changes on vegetation, such as chalk grasslands and wetlands in England and Europe, and species, such as orchids and water voles, to develop sustainable management and restoration.

Our research also aims to advance the science behind water quality guidelines and monitoring by understanding the effects of particulate matter on freshwater ecosystems such as rivers. We are also assessing the drivers of human-carnivore conflict in the UK with our studies on foxes and badgers, and also with carnivores in South Africa, to help resolve problems and raise public understanding of the species and issues involved. We are evaluating the impact of invasive plants and birds in native communities in aquatic and urban environments. Other emerging issues investigated include the threat of chytrid infections on rare amphibians and the impacts of climate change on internationally important floodplain and coastal wetlands (e.g. salt marshes, mangroves) in England, Estonia, and Brazil. Research into pollutants is showing the biological disruption caused by oestrogen in marine environments while our behavioural research has elucidated the impacts of transgenic fruit on chemical signals and behaviour in insects.

Ecology and conservation research projects

Watervole

Re-establishing water voles

Post release dispersal and establishment rates of water voles to determine the impact of landscape structure and habitat on re-establishment.

Pool-frogs

Reintroduction of northern clade pool frogs to the UK

Image of marshland

Extreme climate events and wetlands

Watercress-farming

Can watercress farming directly affect fish communities?

Urban Fox

Urban Mammals

Understanding of how urbanisation affects wildlife

White Rhino and cub

Rhino conservation in South Africa

Graph showing genetic variability of brown hyenas

Comparing the genetic variability of brown hyaena populations

hyaena

Human-Carnivore conflict in South Africa

Parakeets

European network on invasive parakeets

Understanding invasion dynamics and risks to agriculture and society

Global biogeography of traits and extinction risk

Global biogeography of traits and extinction risk

An elevational perspective

Stream next to field of cows

Impacts of landscape structure on water vole population genetics

Water vole at the edge of the water

Habitat creation as a form of mitigation for water vole

Badger

Behaviour of predators in conservation landscapes

Investigating the predation of ground nesting birds in conservation areas

Coastal-wetland-sequestration

Coastal wetland carbon sequestration: impacts of climate change

Zoonotic disease

Zoonoses concern the ability of pathogens to cross the species barrier and lead to episodes of human infectious disease. It is estimated that up to 75 per cent of all emerging and re-emerging human infectious diseases have an animal origin, and that 60 per cent of all human infectious diseases have a link to animal populations. Incidents of zoonotic disease often receive notable media attention, and can generate a significant amount of public disquiet. Notable examples include swine/ avian influenza, and E. coli O157 food poisoning. This research group follows a one-health research strategy, designed to consider infectious disease from a multidisciplinary perspective. This group brings together ecologists, microbiologists, geneticists and healthcare scientists, focussing on incidents of zoonotic disease in the UK.

The group focuses on five key research initiatives.

  • Investigating the clonal turnover of zoonotic agents within animal populations, defined both spatially and temporally.
  • Investigating the antibiotic resistance and bacteriophage susceptibility of pathogens within animal and environmental habitats.
  • Scrutinising how the population structure and behaviour of animals affects the distribution of disease determinants.
  • Phylogenetic analysis of diseases on a broad geographic scale using GIS, and comparing this with host animal movement patterns.
  • Development of disease traceability technology platforms, combining knowledge of GIS, mammal ecology and molecular microbiology.

The group has access to state-of-the-art molecular/genetic technologies, including antibiotic resistance analysis and host animal phylogenetic profiling. By using these technology platforms, we are in a unique position to develop a coherent, over-arching strategy to investigate animal movements and interactions, and incidents of infectious disease. Members of the group have extensive links with industry and academic organisations. For example, the Deer Society (UK) as well as internationally recognised research leaders with whom we currently collaborate (Eliava Institute, Republic of Georgia; Haccetteppe and Bilkent Universities, Republic of Turkey).

Zoonotic research projects

Deer-tick

Ecological determinant Lyme's  disease in the South Downs National Park

 

Antibiotic-resistance-profiling-of-E-coli

Antibiotic resistance profiling of E. coli isolated from wild and agricultural animals

Isolation-of-bacteriophages-specific-to-E-coli

Isolation of bacteriophages specific to E. coli in wild and agricultural animals

Immunopathology-of-Human-T-Cell

Immunopathology of Human T-Cell Lymphotrophic Virus Type 1 (HTLV-1)

Wild-Boar-Wildwood-Kent

Helminth parasites of wild boar (Sus scrofa)

Contributing to contemporary debate

How foxes adapted to life in the cities we built around them

Research team

Dr Graeme Awcock

Dr Marjorie Bardiau

Dr Lara Barnes

Dr Maureen Berg

Dr Gary Bilotta

Dr Matthew Brolly

Dr Niall Burnside

Dr Jon Caplin

Dr Corina Ciocan

Dr Ian Cooper

Dr Neil Crooks

Dr Simon Hardy

Dr Caroline Hodges

Dr Joao Inacio Silva

Dr Simon Jeffs

Dr Chris Joyce

Dr Andrew Overall

Dr Angelo Pernetta

Dr Sarah Pitt

Dr Anja Rott

Dr Dawn Scott

Dr Franziska Schrodt-Williams

Dr Bryony Tolhurst

Dr Raymond Ward

Dr Rachel White

Dr Inga Zeisset

Dr Simon Waddell, Brighton and Sussex Medical School

Output

Sources/links

Collaborations

Funding

Awards, recognition, impact

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