Project
Title: Influence of natural regeneration and ghost roads on tropical habitats, biodiversity, and humans
Description: My research examines how natural regeneration, a highly cost-effective approach to tropical forest restoration, can be strategically leveraged to meet international climate and biodiversity commitments. I map the costs and ecological benefits of natural regeneration across the tropics to inform where restoration investment can be directed, and assess how large-scale regeneration reshapes forest fragmentation globally. I also interrogate the reliability of current fragmentation baselines, demonstrating that ghost roads, informally constructed roads absent from official maps, can cause systematic underestimation of forest fragmentation. Together, this work informs decision-makers with a spatial planning framework that quantifies restoration benefits and provides recalibrated fragmentation baselines across the tropics.
Supervisors
Associate Professor Matthew Luskin, Dr Brooke Williams (University of Newcastle).