Advances in ecological data science

There can be no doubt that the biodiversity of life on Earth is under unprecedented pressure as a consequence of human activities as well as climate change. This project aims to develop a new framework to quantify and monitor biodiversity change in the world. This is an interdisciplinary project closely collaborating with disciplinary scientists such as ecologists and biologists.
The current goal of the project is to develop an integrative framework encompassing:
1) The quantification of (spatio-)temporal change in ecological communities;
2) A scheme to measure and investigate the role of species interactions in communities, in terms of the maintenance and/or the change of biodiversity;
3) The evaluation of the framework - this will be carried out by the analysis and modelling of the worldwide biodiversity records.
The project will make significant advances in theoretical aspects of biodiversity study, integrating statistical and ecological frameworks. This covers a wide range on expertise including: spatio-temporal analysis, theoretical ecology and state-of-art data analysis techniques in dealing with big data in biodiversity research.