Research

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” ~ Traditional biodiversity surveys are time-consuming, labor-intensive, and prone to human error—plus, human presence can disrupt wildlife. Bioacoustic recorders, paired with AI, offer a faster, less invasive way to monitor vocal animals. We use this technology to explore applied ecological questions, such as how human-made noise impacts vocal animal communities and how effective native reforestation efforts are.   View some snaps of us in the field here.

This project aims to map and improve the forest abovegound biomass estimates in Southeast Asia by linking remote sensing data with ground-based data.

Singapore’s tropical forests will not be immune to the effects of climate change. Climate change will lead to long-term changes in precipitation and temperature, as well as the frequency of extreme weather events such as droughts or windstorms, with important implications on the physiology and demography of tree populations in our forests. This project examines the potential effects of climate change on species-, community-and ecosystem-level responses in Singapore’s forests, using a combination using seedling / sapling experiments, the development of vegetation models to evaluate the impact of climate-induced disturbances, and species distribution models to project which native species are most at risk to long-term changes in climate.

The Asian tropics are exceptionally biodiverse and exhibit high levels of endemism, shaped by the vast and dynamic biophysical theatre in its many landmasses and islands. Its biota, however, is threatened by immense, varied and persistent pressures in an increasingly populous part of the world. This project aims to review and synthesise the current state of biodiversity and biodiversity research in the region for a range of terrestrial, freshwater and marine organisms, including patterns of endemism, rates of species discovery, spatiotemporal biases in biodiversity data and the magnitude of threats that species face across the region.

This project aims to improve tropical forest peatland above-ground biomass estimations using traditional ground forest surveys, Terrestrial LiDAR scanning (TLS) and Drone LiDAR scanning (ULS). We further aim to understand the effects of human disturbance at the edge of peatland forests in Brunei, and the impacts on their geomorphology, ecology, biodiversity and biomass.

Animals play important roles as seed dispersers in tropical forest ecosystems and so the pervasive decline of animal populations (“defaunation”) will lead to cascading effects on tree populations, ecosystem structure and carbon storage. However, predicting the impacts of defaunation on seed dispersal failure remains a challenge due to the paucity of ecological interaction information globally. This project aims to fill these gaps through the development of a global database of seed dispersal information and machine learning interaction models.

Insect declines in abundance have been documented across a variety of ecosystems. In highly urbanised Singapore, the long-term impact of land use change on insect communities is expected to be large but is relatively poorly known, due to lack of quantitative and standardised ecological baselines and the immense diversity of many insect groups, making traditional taxonomic identification methods insufficiently scalable for broader ecological studies. This project aims to establish a network of insect sampling sites that will leverage newly established national long-term forest ecosystem monitoring programmes, and the development of DNA-based methodologies for rapid characterisation of ecological communities.

Does higher bacterial diversity mean healthy seas? Seagrasses are marine plants known for their ability to reduce bacterial pathogens. I investigate if these underwater grasslands keep coastlines healthy by maintaining high microbial diversity in the seawater.

This project aims to provide empirical evidence for the climate benefits of a primarily biodiversity-focused conservation intervention by using tiger conservation in India as a model. We found that enhanced species focused conservation led to over 93$ million USD in climate regulation services in India over the study period. Link to the study here. Media features: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/tiger-conservation-in-india-saved-at-least-one-million-tonnes-of-co2-from-being-emitted-study https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/tiger-conservation-efforts-bring-carbon-benefits-worth-rs-769-crore/articleshow/100924231.cms https://abcnews.go.com/US/tiger-conservation-india-helping-mitigate-climate-change/story?id=99567912