India's rich history of scientific exploration provides an opportunity to tap into a plethora of historical datasets available to inform biodiversity conservation.
Currently, I am quantifying the response of avifauna to a century of landscape and climatic changes across the Nilgiris and the Anamalais of the Western Ghats. Using data from historical maps, satellite images, diaries of ornithologists and journal articles within a statistical framework, I aim to understand the impacts of environmental changes on avian distributions. This project is being carried out in collaboration with academic institutions, non-governmental organizations and science communicators. |
Increasing anthropogenic pressures of deforestation and forest degradation are threatening the natural heritage of the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot. A novel solution lies in the use of acoustics to inform biodiversity conservation. Using non-invasive audio recorders along a gradient of forest regeneration, I aim to evaluate forest restoration efforts in the Anamalais, Western Ghats. This project is being carried out in collaboration with the Nature Conservation Foundation, science communicators and other academic institutions. For more details on a long-term acoustic monitoring study across central India and the Western Ghats, click here.
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The advent of large-scale citizen science datasets has now made it possible to carry out a wide range of research across a number of species, including mapping species distributions and prioritizing conservation efforts.
Using data from the world's largest citizen science database, eBird, I aim to understand the role of environmental drivers in determining species distributions. |