Background

I provide strategic leadership and oversight of BTO science, which encompasses both monitoring and research. Our monitoring includes both volunteer-based and professional surveys to assess changes in the abundance, distribution and demography of bird populations, and of selected non-avian taxa.  We also lead on the analysis of these data, conducting research to understand causes of population change, the processes that underpin observed ecological patterns, and to inform what is required to manage species and habitats. In addition, I lead BTO’s climate change research which involves documenting impacts on UK biodiversity, undertaking projections of likely future impacts on species’ distributions and abundance, and informing the development of climate change adaptation. In 2014 CUP published Birds and Climate Change. Impacts and Conservation Responses, which I co-authored with Rhys Green.