Supervisors: Dr Frederick Draper, Dr Andrew Hacket-Pain, Dr Imam Basuki, Prof. David Edwards
My PhD focuses on understanding the biodiversity and carbon stocks of lowland-wetland forests in West Papua, Indonesian New Guinea. New Guinea’s forests are the among the most floristically diverse on Earth with exceptional levels of species endemism. These forests are also poorly understood and, while largely intact, are increasingly threatened by logging and conversion for agriculture. I will combine novel field measurements with remote-sensing to better understand these forests, their threats, and assess potential pathways to conserve them alongside sustainable development.
More broadly, I’m interested in assessing the effectiveness of conservation and ways to reduce natural habitat loss. Before my PhD, I researched REDD+ schemes and ways to improve them at The Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits. I have also researched the outcomes of different approaches to forest restoration in Central Europe and farm-level agrobiodiversity trends across sub-Saharan Africa.
