Current Researchers                    Anna Calvert, M.Sc. Trina Fitzgerald, M.Sc. Carolyn Matkovich, B.Sc.  Contact Information Current Projects   Anna Calvert, Ph.D. Candidate   Modelling the potential effects of climate change on bird migration I am interested in modelling the dynamics and demographics of migratory bird populations for the purpose of their conservation, through the use of mark-recapture analyses and other statistical techniques. I have previously examined questions of population estimation in Atlantic Puffins and survival/mortality modelling in Greater Snow Geese. Now for my PhD, I’ll be combining weather information with census and mark-recapture data of passerines migrating through southern Nova Scotia in order to develop models linking migration and climate. My overall goal is to forecast the effects of climate change on various aspects of migrations and to determine which species or groups may be particularly vulnerable.   Trina Fitzgerald, M.Sc.   Bird migrantion in southern Nova Scotia I am  the Project Coordinator for the Atlantic Bird Observatory which operates field stations on two coastal islands off southern Nova Scotia. My  involvement with this research includes volunteer recruitment and training, fieldwork, day to day operations, data collection and analysis. Carolyn Matkovich, M.Sc. Candidate     Local-scale movements of birds at windfarms - a radar study. I use  radar to examine fine-scale bird movements in relation to topography, weather and wind.  This information will hopefully feed into models that can better assess placement of windfarms Dr. Joerg Tews My research is on the impacts of environmental change on ecosystem stability. As part of my NSERC postdoc at Acadia I am currently developing spatial and non-spatial, stochastic Lotka-Volterra community models to investigate how non-random patterns of species extinctions ( e.g., as a result of climate change) may cascade through an ecosystem and therefore effects its overall stability. My scientific roots are actually more related to population ecology and the application of spatial-explicit simulation models. However, when I first started to develop computer models that e.g. included intra and inter-specific competition or mortality through predators I realized how important it is to incorporate the effects of multi-species interactions. I hope my work will contribute to our general understanding of how environmental change will influence and change the dynamics of ecological systems.