Appalachian Biodiversity Projections
Land-use and climate change projections for the Appalachian region to model biodiversity impacts.
Project Overview
Designed and built spatial land-use change projections for the Appalachians to model and quantify the relative impacts of climate change versus land-use changes on regional biodiversity. By predicting development expansion and habitat fragmentation, this project guides conservation priorities.
My Role
Graduate Student Researcher. Focused on spatial modeling, future land-use simulation, and corridor connectivity assessments.
Tools / Stack
Project Details
Implementation Roadmap
Development Process.
Retrieve historical land cover data and identify drivers of urban expansion.
Run spatial Markov chain models to simulate future development footprints.
Integrate climate projection data to model species range shifts.
Compute ecological connectivity using circuit theory to trace wildlife migration corridors.
Overlay projected corridors with current protected areas to identify conservation gaps.
Case Study Analysis
Challenges & Outcomes.
Integrating disparate spatial datasets representing different scales, coordinate systems, and resolutions.
Developed custom preprocessing pipelines in Python to downscale and harmonize raster resolutions and reproject spatial coordinate systems.
Identified critical unprotected corridors in the Southern Appalachians that are vital for long-term species migrations under warming climates.