Kerry Stewart, Ph.D.

I am a Christopher W. Clark postdoctoral fellow studying ecosystem-scale monitoring of the largest wetland in the world, the Pantanal. In my work, I am interested in applying emerging methods for biodiversity monitoring to improve our understanding of how the world’s ecosystems are responding to global change. I am particularly excited about trying to understand the processes that support biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and how they are impacted by human activity. 

I did my PhD at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom where I studied the projected impact of avian extinctions on functional diversity. I found that avian functional diversity is particularly at risk due to human activity and that targeted conservation actions, above those in place for species richness, will be required to conserve functional diversity.

I will bring my expertise in trait-based ecology to the Pantanal project, where I will continue to use species traits to understand the patterns and implications of biodiversity loss, alongside data on species occupancy and response to human activities at broad taxonomic and spatial scales with high spatial and temporal resolution. Using this cutting-edge dataset, we will measure ecosystem integrity across the Pantanal, to inform management decisions, identify priorities for conservation and advance approaches for ecosystem-scale monitoring.