I am a quantitative ecologist, interested in developing scalable and efficient biodiversity monitoring methods to study ecological systems and human-wildlife interactions. My current research is based in the Cairngorms Connect landscape, Scotland’s largest habitat restoration project.
How do recreational activities alter spatiotemporal species interactions networks, and can this knowledge assist in promoting pro-environmental behaviour?
PhD aims:
- Develop efficient AI-assisted monitoring methods for studying biodiversity and human-wildlife interactions at scale.
- Investigate how large mammals and birds respond to recreational activity in the Cairngorms Connect landscape.
PhD objectives:
- Collect and synthesise data from Strava metro to quantify levels of recreational activity in the Cairngorms.
- Understand and quantify error rates introduced by AI-assisted labelling tools for camera trap and acoustic data.
- Collect data with passive acoustic monitoring and camera trapping experiments to study the influence of humans on the spatiotemporal activity of birds and mammals.
- Apply quantitative methods in social science to investigate attitudes and responses of people in Scotland to behavioural requests made on signs, such as keeping dogs on leads and avoiding sensitive areas.
Contact details:
Email: ajpc1@st-andrews.ac.uk
Twitter: @AmberCowans
Publications:
Cowans et al. (2024). Improving the integration of artificial intelligence into existing ecological inference workflows. Methods in Ecology and Evolution.