Four lines of work

Qinghai–Tibet Plateau and snow leopards

Surrogate species, priority landscapes, climate refugia, human–snow leopard conflict.

I have studied snow leopard ecology and conservation on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau since 2009. This work examines climate refugia, priority landscapes, connectivity, poaching and trade, human–wildlife conflict, and the roles of local communities and Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in conservation. It also provides the foundation for my broader interest in large carnivores and coexistence.

Open data and AI methods

Google Earth Engine and Earth observation, LLM data extraction, AI-assisted meta-analysis, culturomics and social media, with emphasis on validation.

Conservation often has to act before evidence is complete. I study where computational methods can extend ecological research, including culturomics, large language models, and AI-assisted workflows, with provenance, validation, uncertainty, and scientific judgment kept explicit.

Reconstructing change: past and recovery

Historical distributions and baselines, decades of habitat change, wildlife recovery and observation bias.

I work with field observations, spatial data, global biodiversity databases, and emerging sources such as public digital records to distinguish short-term change from durable ecological recovery.

Human footprint and biodiversity

Human production-niche expansion, pastoralism and large-mammal range loss, cropland expansion and abandonment, farmland birds, protected areas and agriculture.

An emerging, collaborative direction. My published work here so far is co-authored in collaborations led by colleagues.

I ask how agriculture, cropland abandonment, urbanization, and other forms of land-use change reshape biodiversity.