Stuart Brooker
My overriding concern is for the conservation of habitats and species. I am interested in the spatial and temporal distribution of species within the landscape, and how populations and communities respond to environmental change and loss of habitat. I seek to understand the causal factors underlying population fluctuations, and ultimately, I hope that my work can offer remedies for the reversal of worrying declines. Acoustic monitoring of sound-producing animals is becoming an increasingly efficient process thanks to advances in automated audio recorders. I utilised such equipment during my PhD to determine influences on the timing and intensity of dawn singing activity in woodland bird communities throughout Great Britain. However, extracting reliable species-specific information from large and noisy acoustic datasets remains problematic. In my current role, I am assisting in the design and build of a web-based platform that will facilitate the classification of audio data by citizen scientists. The platform will allow citizen scientists to augment our current datasets by uploading and classifying their own recordings. The output will provide the Conservation Ecology Group with valuable data that will be used to better understand the distribution, ecology and vocal behaviour of target species. I have also been working with Durham University’s Estates and Facilities Directorate, assisting in a biodiversity assessment of the university estate. This work will identify areas of high biodiversity value with the intention of safe-guarding their future. Position: Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Biosciences
Supervised by: Prof. Stephen Willis, Dr. Philip Stephens Memberships: Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution Research (BEER) Centre Royal Society of Biology (MRSB) Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (Grad-CIEEM) British Ecological Society British Ornithologists' Union Contact Details: Department of Biosciences, Durham University, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE Phone + 44 (0) 191 334 1266 Email: s.a.brooker@durham.ac.uk Education
2015 - 2020 PhD Biological Sciences, Durham University 2013 - 2015 MScR Biological Sciences, Durham University 2009 - 2012 BSc Ecology (Honours), University of Essex Publications
Brooker, S. A., Stephens, P. A., Whittingham, M. J., Willis, S. G. (2020) Automated detection and classification of birdsong: an ensemble approach. Ecological Indicators 117, 106609. Selected Awards
NERC Iapetus PhD Student Award, 2016 The Grevillea Trust Masters Scholarship, University of Durham, 2013 The Society of Biology Student Award, University of Essex, 2012 The Abel-Imray Project Prize, University of Essex, 2012 The Environmental and Conservation Prize, University of Essex, 2012 The Environmental and Conservation Prize, University of Essex, 2011 |
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