Designing Tomorrow's biodiversity data

Increasingly scientists and global leaders are recognizing the necessity of designing biodiversity observation networks for addressing the ongoing biodiversity crisis. In collaboration with GEO BON, I develop open sources tools for designing new observation networks using best practices and data. In my research I assess the ability of different design algorithms to meet monitoring goals and provide recommendations for specific ecological contexts.

Understanding Biodiversity change through functional traits 

Understanding how biodiversity is changing is a fundamental question of ecology and conservation. While species-based metrics fail to capture change in many communities, fucntional diversity offers a powerful alternative for measuring change. We reconstructed timeseries of functional diversity using data from the Biotime database and multiple functional trait databases to look at general trends in change through time.
KEA Norman, C Boettiger. In Prep. Evidence of widespread maintenance of functional composition in vertebrate communities.

NEON data for Biodiversity research

The National Ecological Observation Network provides data spanning taxa across the United States and now has a sufficient number of repeated samples to look at trends through time. We create a pipeline for using NEON data for biodiversity research and take a first look at cross-taxa stability patterns.
Nagy, RC, JK Balch, EK Bissell, ME Cattau, NF Glenn, BS Halpern, N Ilangakoon, B Johnson, MB Joseph, S Marconi, C O’Riordan, J Sanovia, TL Swetnam, WR Travis, LA Wasse, PL Zarnetske and 2019 NEON Science Summit Participants (including KEA Norman; 118 authors). 2021. Harnessing the NEON data revolution to advance open environmental science with a diverse and data-capable community. Ecosphere 12 (12), e03833.
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​MA Jarzyna, KEA Norman,  JM LaMontagne,  MR Helmus, D Li, SM Parker, M Perez Rocha, S Record, E Sokol, P Zarnetske, and TD Surasinghe. 2022. Ecosystem stability is related to animal community dynamics at a continental scale. Ecosphere 13 (3), e3970.

​Li, D, S Record, ER Sokol, ME Bitters, MY Chen, YA Chung, MR Helmus, R Jaimes, L Jansen, MA Jarzyna, MG Just, JM LaMontagne, B Melbourne, W Moss, KEA Norman, S Parker, N Robinson, B Seyednasrollah, C Smith, S Spaulding, T Surasinghe, S Thomsen, P Zarnetske. 2021. Preprint. Tidy NEON organismal data for biodiversity research. Ecosphere 13 (7): e4141.

taxadb: a tool for maintaing taxonomic consistency

Dealing with taxonomic inconsistencies is a major hurdle in synthesis work. Our R package taxadb ​provides fast and consistent access to taxonomic data providers, resolving thousand of names to ID's in seconds.
Norman, Kari E. A., Scott Chamberlain, and Carl Boettiger. 2020. “Taxadb: A High-Performance Local Taxonomic Database Interface.” Methods in Ecology and Evolution 11 (9): 1153–9. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13440.