People

Aoife supports the team by making stakeholder connections in Ireland, gathering contacts for the WP7 focus groups and reaching out to Irish schools along the coastline.

Aoife has a background in clinical cancer research and technical writing for the academic, SME and charity sectors. She is now Communications Officer in UCC’s Environmental Research Institute, where she manages the internal and external communication channels and supports researchers with their outreach, education, and public engagement activities.

Aoife is passionate about wildlife and conservation, is a grant writer for Wildlife Rehabilitation Ireland, and member of the Cork Social & Health Education Project’s Earth Aware group. When not typing furiously, Aoife is out running or adding to her unfinished artwork pile.

Leads Work Package 1 – Project Management and Governance

Crona is Project Manager for the ECHOES project. She also manages her team at Geo Smart Decisions, a geospatial consultancy, from her home office in Gwynedd. She has a PhD in use of remote sensing imagery for mapping and monitoring semi-natural wetland vegetation and carried out her research on RSPB site Insh Marshes in Scotland.

She has a First Class degree in Environmental Science from the University of Stirling and, after four years working for a large environmental consultancy in Edinburgh, she set her business up in 2011 and has been working on a wide range of projects both in the UK and abroad ever since.

Crona’s professional skills and experience are in the use of spatial data analysis, satellite Earth Observation and in situ field data for informing the management and monitoring of the natural environment. Various aspects of the ECHOES project are therefore of great interest to Crona and she is thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to apply her project management experience and skills to steer the ECHOES project to success.

Leads Work Package 3 and 4

Peter coordinates the science on species distribution modelling and field ecological survey of wintering populations of the Greenland White-fronted Geese and Curlew for the ECHOES project (work packages 3 and 4). He is excited at the prospect of working with existing conservation partners to investigate key habitats of these birds in estuaries and coastal wetlands fringing the Irish Sea, and to anticipate impacts of the climate emergency.

Peter has worked at Aberystwyth University since 2006. He is now Reader within the Ecology Group, IBERS, with specialisms in ecology of grazed ecosystems and monitoring and assessment of biodiversity in a changing environment.

Peter has authored 46 papers in scientific journals and 77 book chapters, reports and proceedings papers. He has served as editor/ associate editor on various international research journals and on scientific committees, e.g., Secretary of the UK Biodiversity Science Committee (Royal Society), 2012-2016.

Rachel is coordinating the bird tracking activities for the ECHOES project in Ireland and Wales (Work Package 3). The rest of her time is spent leading the development of BTO’s scientific profile in Wales – developing regionally appropriate projects and managing local projects in the Principality.

Her research interests are in the use of long-term ringing datasets to monitor survival in wading birds; biophysical indicators of body and environmental condition in birds; and the use of tracking technology to study individuals’ use of spatially complex landscapes such as upland farmland.

Rachel has a parallel research background in greenhouse gas emission and carbon sequestration modelling in agricultural systems, which helps inform BTO’s work on the wider ecosystem services implications of landscape management for both biodiversity and agricultural production.

Rachel is also an active wader, seabird and passerine ringer, and very talented stained-glass artist.

Leads Work Package 5

Fiona coordinates the work on satellite imagery for the ECHOES project. This work is to create habitat and land cover maps for the bird survey sites in Ireland and Wales. This work will help understanding how the land cover has changed in recent years and may further evolve over coming years as a result of climate change. Fiona is also on the ECHOES Programme Board, representing University College Cork, Ireland.

Fiona has been involved in satellite observation of planet Earth for more than 20 years and has looked at regions as diverse as the Greenland ice sheet, a Chilean volcano, an English mudflat and an Irish forest.

Underpinning all her remote sensing work is an interest and quest to understand more about how that particular region and environment is changing in response to natural fluctuations in physical systems, and change arising from human activities, especially with respect to anthropogenic climate change, human management and policy decisions. It is only by being able to map, measure and record these changes that we can appreciate and project how the environment and those who live in it (both human, and other living entities) will continue to evolve under different conditions, a theme that is core to the ECHOES project. As well as being part of the ECHOES team, Fiona spends her time teaching university level students and supporting a range of research endeavours in Ireland and elsewhere.

Gareth joins the ECHOES team as a part time seasonal Senior Field Ecologist (Work Package 4). Gareth will be working on a study of the habitat use of two bird species dependent on the Dyfi estuary during the winter. These species are the Curlew and Greenland White-fronted Goose.

Gareth has previously worked for the RSPB, Birdwatch Ireland, Scottish Natural Heritage and latterly as a consultant. Most of this work has involved bird monitoring, with some visitor and stakeholder engagement, and has taken him all over Britain and Ireland in various roles. He has a particular interest in the White-fronted Goose having studied this species on the Dyfi for several years and is interested in anything that may further its conservation.

Holly supports the Project Coordinator and provides all aspects of administration support on the project. She also works closely with the Stakeholder Engagement Officer doing a variety of tasks including researching potential stakeholders for the project, work required for social media, research on policies and procedures and provides support for event management and administration.

Holly has spent many happy years in different naturally beautiful places around the world as an Outdoor Activity Instructor. She has also trained as a primary school teacher and is keen to use these skills as part of the ECHOES project’s engagement work. Holly is also enthusiastic to be part of a project that inspires others to appreciate our environment and learn how to value and conserve it.

Katharine is a behavioural ecologist and modeller who works for the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). Being a part of their Wetland and Marine Team, she is based in the Welsh office (BTO Cymru) and splits her time between projects in Wales and the rest of the UK.

Katherine is part of Work Package 3 (Bird species distribution modelling). Katharine is used to analyse a range of biological data but importantly for the ECHOES project, she is experienced in analysing tracking data from tagging projects and population modelling. Being a licenced bird ringer, she will also be assisting with the tagging fieldwork and data management from the downloads of the deployed tags.

Katharine is excited to be part of such an innovative and collaborative project as ECHOES. Learning more about how two bird species interact with habitats around the Irish sea will be fascinating to be a part of. 

Gemma is a lecturer at Aberystwyth University. Her area of expertise is evolutionary and population genetics. Within the ECHOES project, she is involved in the research that is being carried out as part of Work Package 4 (Bird tracking and associated vegetation surveys). This research will utilise Gemma’s molecular skills, in carrying out processes such as metabarcoding.

Since completing her PhD, Gemma’s research has focused on the field of conservation genetics. Results from this research are used to inform management strategies for many rare and threatened species. Gemma is also interested in evolutionary responses of natural populations to global change. This ranges from using phylogeographic approaches to elucidate the response of species to previous climatic changes, to using next-generation sequencing (NGS) approaches to determine the potential for populations to respond to future climate change.

Gemma hopes that the research that she and her colleagues will carry out as part of the ECHOES project will have long term benefits – not only for our target species but also the habitats in which they exist and the communities that relies on them.

Leads Work Package 7

Gearóid Ó Riain coordinates the work on the ECHOES Web Platform. He is also Managing Director at Compass Informatics, which he co-founded over twenty years ago.  Compass Informatics uses GIS, analytics, and IT skills to create ways of managing our environment and natural resources; to enhance transportation, planning, and heritage; and to ensure regulatory compliance in areas like utilities. 

The activities of the company have always allowed Gearóid to combine an interest in creating sustainable and commercially successful companies – including quality employment and his long-held interest in everything from natural resources to strong communities. 

The ECHOES project provides an opportunity to create an excellent web platform and to make the most of GIS, earth observation, and technical skills in the context of climate change impact management.

Mark will be helping the ECHOES project with the vegetation surveying on the areas being grazed by the Greenland White-fronted Geese (Work Package 4).

Mark is a graduate from The University of Wales, Aberystwyth (as it was at the time) in Countryside Management.  Mark has been working for IGER, and subsequently IBERS, Aberystwyth University since 2004.  He mostly does field trial work, currently with the Prosoil Plus project, where they are researching different types of forage crops and mixes with different management regimes for their viability, productivity, and effect on soil health.  This work includes plant population counts, and botanical separations of cut samples.

Mark also has laboratory experience and has spent some time in a molecular laboratory environment, looking at the dietary effect of different feeds for microbial populations in ruminant animals.

Raghnall is a Product Development Manager in Compass Informatics with a particular focus on agriculture and sustainability. For the Echoes project he will be contributing to the platform analysis and solution design in the context of product development, helping to build a platform that supports the research aims of the project and helps to highlight the results produced. Raghnall has a specific interest in physical geography, holds a degree in Computer Science complimented by a MSc in Earth Science. His aim is to deliver a platform that allows us to tell the storey of how the species and habitats we are studying are being impacted in a changing climate.

Paul primarily undertakes research that uses geographic information science (GIS) and spatial analysis to address ecological, environmental, and geographic issues, with a key focus on species distribution modelling (SDM) and movement ecology.

Within the ECHOES project, he will be supporting the research on SDM at multiple spatial and temporal scales, and also developing methods of incorporating telemetry data of the birds into an SDM framework (Work Package 5). This will improve our understanding of the fine-scale foraging patterns within wintering habitats and how broad-scale movements in relation to climate and land use change impact their distribution at an international level.

Paul is very much looking forward to work on a project that brings together experts from a wide-ranging number of organisations, addressing very pertinent issues for under-pressure species.

Pete’s role in the ECHOES project is to provide input and enhancements for the application of remote sensing-based monitoring systems through his EODataDown software (Work Package 5).

Pete’s research is concerned with the computational processing of spatial data, primarily for the mapping of land surfaces and biophysical attributes. His research involves the development of new and automated techniques for information retrieval from image and 3D point cloud datasets.

A current area of focus is the mapping of mangrove forest extent and change globally. Datasets from this research form the key background datasets for the Global Mangrove Watch.

Fergal works as Web Developer at Compass Informatics. Since October 2020, he is part of the team tasked with developing tools for the ECHOES Web Platform (Work Package 7).
Fergal was awarded a First Class Honours in Information Technology for Business from the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology.
Fergal started his career at Hewlett-Packard, developing web applications and tools for internal and external audiences. He joined Compass Informatics in 2019 and was stationed at the Marine Institute in Galway where he worked on a project to develop visualisations for marine data (charting and maps amongst other things).
Fergal has experience in developing ASP.NET, Angular, React and Vue.js web applications. He has also developed mobile applications for Android and iOS.
Fergal is looking forward to working on a useful set of tools to help visualize the effects of climate change on habitats.

Hannah is an ecologist based within the BTO’s Cymru office and works on various projects to understand Welsh bird populations to inform conservation efforts. Her previous research combined traditional and modern monitoring techniques (including GPS tracking) to better understand bird behaviours and potential threats, including climate change.
Hannah is part of Work Package 3 (Bird species distribution modelling) and is applying her previous knowledge of GPS tracking analysis to assess the movements of the Greenland White-fronted Geese and Curlew to better understand their habitat preferences across the landscape.
For Hannah, it is a delight to be a part of such a broad collaboration of people and expertise. Specifically, as an ecologist, it is a privilege to gain an insight into where these elusive species go and to understand what habitats they are using, in order to further aid conservation efforts across both sides of the Irish Sea.

Callum is an ecologist based within the BTO’s Cymru office, working on various projects to understand Welsh bird populations and inform their conservation. His previous research seeks to understand how human-induced environmental change, including climate change, affects individuals, populations and communities of organisms; much like the ECHOES project.

Within ECHOES, Callum is working to analyse incoming data from tagged birds, with a particular focus on Greenland White-fronted Geese, to better understand their habitat preferences and use of the landscape. Callum is also assisting with fieldwork to deploy further tags.

For Callum, ECHOES is a particularly exciting project because the tagging work is providing a unique window into the lives of two species that are renowned for being hard to observe and sensitive to disturbance. With luck, this will generate new insights into how best to conserve these species and their habitats in Wales and Ireland.

Jyoti supports the public-facing activities for ECHOES. This includes facilitating stakeholder engagement through workshops, social media and other awareness raising activities, including development of materials about the project.

Jyoti has a background in communications within the NGO and public sectors, internationally and in the UK. Within international development, she has worked in global advocacy, training and rural development. She has also gained significant experience in socially-motivated business, managing events, press and marketing. In 2014 she founded (and continues to run) an organisation that creates employment for jewellery artisans in Nepal.

Jyoti enjoys running around the hills of mid-Wales, to which she has recently returned. She is very glad to be part of a project that looks at the practical, local effects of climate change around the Irish Sea.

Holly is a botanist and ecologist working as a Research Technician for Aberystwyth University as part of ECHOES Work Package 4. Her focus is on the food plants of the Greenland White-fronted Geese and how the effect of sea-level rise will affect the viability of these plants’ habitats and subsequently the future feeding strategies of the GWfG.

As part of the ECHOES project Holly’s time is split equally between the field and the laboratory. She identifies, collects, and sorts samples of vegetation for biochemical analysis. This analysis will provide understanding and compare the levels of nutrition the GWfG get from their food plants during their time spent in Ireland and Wales over the winter. Holly is also assisting with the identification of botanical habitats for land cover mapping in WP5, which aims to produce habitat and land cover maps for Ireland and Wales using pixel-based machine learning technologies.

Holly is excited to work on a project that uses plants to understand habitat-use by wetland birds and predict how that might change in light of climate change and sea-level rise. She believes ECHOES strength is its focus on the reality of climate change in the Irish Sea, offering practical solutions to land managers.

Walther is part of the habitat and land cover mapping team at the ECHOES project (Work Package 5). He manages the implementation and automation of a machine learning pixel-based approach to generate a set of habitat and land cover maps from Earth Observation for key areas in Ireland and Wales. He is also part of the climate projections team (work package 6), overseeing the analysis of potential effects of projected climate change on the distribution of key habitats and species.

Walther is a graduate of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá, Colombia) with a BSc and Politecnico di Torino (Italy) with a MSc in Civil Engineering. In 2015, he completed a PhD in Environmental Protection and Management in Politecnico di Torino. During his experience as a researcher, he has worked in several projects linked to remote sensing, natural disasters, climate change and data analysis.

Walther is enthused to work in a multidisciplinary and skilled group of people such as the ECHOES project team. He hopes work will encourage more people to take actions on climate change adaptation. 

Warren is part of Work Package 3 (Bird species distribution modelling). Warren works on analysing how the distribution of migratory bird populations relates to local habitat and environmental variables affected by climate change. Although there is much historical data available already, both on species numbers and local habitats, he will be using new data generated by ECHOES colleagues to refine models, for example using more accurate migration data from satellite tagging and tracking.

Warren joined the ECHOES project because he was intrigued by the potential of statistics to identify how factors in changing habitats affect the long-term viability of species, and how it can build sustainability into habitat management and broader policy decisions. His doctoral thesis was an exercise in novel statistical methods related to evolutionary biology.

Warren’s curiosity about the natural environment extends beyond birds to the other participants, including insects, in the food web of which birds are a part. He also takes an interest in food quality, sustainable agriculture and ecological restoration. In his recent professional life, he has worked as a knowledge engineer, web developer and computational chemist. Working at the British Trust for Ornithology, Warren helped put the Wetland Birds Survey report online for the first time.

Robert is involved in Earth Observation and GIS data analysis in the ECHOES project (Work Package 7). He has a strong background in GIS, data analysis, and Earth Observation.
He has worked as a key part of the Compass Informatics team on bespoke development and spatial analysis projects since 2013.
Robert has always been interested in all aspects of the natural world. With an MSc in Environmental Science, complemented with a Higher Diploma in Data Analytics, Robert is keen to bring data to the fore to demonstrate the effects of climate change on the environment and species.

Luke assists with the fieldwork in Wexford, including the tagging of Curlew and Greenland White-Fronted Geese, the setting up and collection of tagged data from the base stations and ground truthing for the study areas. He also plays a role in the community engagement in Ireland, interacting with the necessary stakeholders, environmental groups, and schools.

Luke was keen to get involved with the ECHOES project as he has a passion for birds, and a chance to be involved in a project that is concerned with the conservation of coastal habitats and its birdlife based in his native Wexford was an opportunity that could not be passed up. 

Luke studied geography in University College Cork where he gained a keen interest in biogeography, GIS and remote sensing and he is glad to be using these skills out in the field and to assist in the data analysis. 

James leads the Impacts and Adaptation Group at MaREI, the Centre for Climate, Energy, and Marine, based at University College Cork, Ireland. James is the lead researcher on Climate Ireland, a climate service supporting local authorities and sectors adapt to climate change.
James’s research aims to support the implementation of effective, sustainable, and socially just adaptation that reduce the impacts of hazards and climate change at the coast. James’ research interests encompass natural hazards, GIS, remote sensing, and social vulnerability. James is supporting Work package 6 for ECHOES.
James is looking forward to work on a project that combines a range of expertise and approaches to inform adaptation of valuable habitats and species.

Sue is an Analytical chemist with research interests including near infrared spectroscopy, in particular, quantitative and qualitative analysis of near infra-red spectra from forages and seed crops.
For ECHOES Sue is conducting biochemical analysis to determine nutritional value of plant material.