PhD candidate at NTNU, Department of Natural History.
- Developing case studies that use citizen science to address applied ecology questions
- Evaluating citizen science-based approaches to biodiversity data analysis
I am broadly interested in researching ecological community response to changing environmental conditions. Climate change, land use change, and other human impacts on the environment interact to affect species distributions, in turn affecting species’ interactions with one another. The rapid rise in popularity of opportunistic citizen science species reporting—that is, public contribution to large databases of species observations, often through smartphone apps—has been an exciting development for this type of research, resulting in massive databases of species distribution data. I am excited to be working with Transforming Citizen Science for Biodiversity to investigate new approaches for harnessing the power of these citizen science databases to tackle pressing ecological questions with conservation and management implications.
My PhD research at NTNU, begun in 2018, is informed by my background in both ecological research and the implementation of citizen science programming. My master’s research, conducted at the University of Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, involved investigating the response of fish species assemblages along the thermal gradient in Wyoming freshwater streams. After earning my master’s degree, I worked for two years as the Citizen Science Outreach Coordinator at New Hampshire Sea Grant/University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, facilitating community volunteer participation in all kinds of coastal research projects ranging from surveying beach profiles to collecting data on migrating juvenile eels. I am excited to bring my background in both of these fields to my research with NTNU. Outside of my work with NTNU, you’ll find me exploring the outdoors through trail running, skiing, bicycling, and more. As a newcomer to Norway from the United States, I’m looking forward to the opportunity to explore as much of the natural beauty that Norway has to offer as possible!
My primary PhD supervisor is Anders Finstad (NTNU), and I am also supervised by Erlend Nilsen (NINA) and Francesca Verones (NTNU).
Email: caitlin.mandeville@ntnu.no
Twitter: @cp_mandeville
ORCID: 0000-0002-1361-607X