Background

Research profile

I am a post-doctoral Research Associate working in international species conservation policy. My publication record and other information can be found on Google Scholar and Scopus

Experience

2017 - present

Research Associate at Newcastle University, UK.

2014-2016

Post-doctoral researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden.

2010-2014

PhD student at the University of York, UK.

Research

Current research

My research here at Newcastle focuses on Aichi Biodiversity Target 12 of the Convention on Biological Diversity's Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020. Target 12 states:

By 2020, the extinction of known threatened species has been prevented and their conservation status, particularly of those most in decline, has been improved and sustained.

I work with Dr Philip McGowan and collaborate closely with the colleagues from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) to understand why global progress towards this target has been limited. I aim to understand the challenges in achieving Target 12 and to develop a decision-support approach that will assist countries in conserving threatened species.

The Aichi Biodiversity Targets cover the period 2011-2020, and I work with the IUCN SSC Post-2020 Biodiversity Task Force to provide the scientific basis for the next iteration of international species conservation targets. The Task Force works at the science-policy interface, collating and disseminating scientific research on species conservation to international policy makers at the Convention on Biological Diversity. 

Research background

My background is in macro-ecology, with a focus on patterns and drivers of species distribution changes in response to climate change and land use. I am particularly interested in the application of citizen science data (CSD) to address ecological questions. I have used CSD to quantify and understand changes in the distribution and abundance of British butterflies in response to climate change, and to project likely responses of old-forest indicator species of wood-decaying fungi to scenarios of forest management and climate change in Sweden.

Publications

• Mair L, Mill AC, Robertson PA, Rushton SP, Shirley MDF, Rodriguez JP, McGowan PJK. The contribution of scientific research to conservation planning. Biological Conservation 2018, 223, 82-96.
• Mair L, Jönsson M, Räty M, Bärring L, Strandberg G, Lämås T, Snäll T. Land use changes could modify future negative effects of climate change on old‐growth forest indicator species. Diversity and Distributions 2018, 24(10), 1416–1425.
• Bradter U, Mair L, Jönsson M, Knape J, Singer A, Snäll T. Can opportunistically‐collected Citizen Science data fill a data gap for habitat suitability models of less common species?. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 2018, 9(7), 1667-1678.
• Löbel S, Mair L, Lönnell N, Schröder B, Snäll T. Biological traits explain bryophyte species distributions and responses to forest fragmentation and climatic variation. Journal of Ecology 2018, 106(4), 1700-1713.
• Mair L, Harrison PJ, Räty M, Bärring L, Strandberg G, Snäll T. Forest management could counteract distribution retractions forced by climate change. Ecological Applications 2017, 27(5), 1485–1497.
• Mair L, Harrison PJ, Jonsson M, Lobel S, Norden J, Siitonen J, Lamas T, Lundstrom A, Snall T. Evaluating citizen science data for forecasting species responses to national forest management. Ecology and Evolution 2017, 7(1), 368-378.
• Belinchón R, Harrison PJ, Mair L, Várkonyi G, Snäll T. Local epiphyte establishment and future metapopulation dynamics in landscapes with different spatiotemporal properties. Ecology 2017, 98(3), 741-750.
• Mair L, Ruete A. Explaining Spatial Variation in the Recording Effort of Citizen Science Data across Multiple Taxa. PLOS One 2016, 11(1), e0147796.
• Mair L, Thomas CD, Franco AMA, Hill JK. Quantifying the activity levels and behavioural responses of butterfly species to habitat boundaries. Ecological Entomology 2015, 40(6), 823-828.
• Mair L, Hill JK, Fox R, Botham M, Brereton T, Thomas CD. Abundance changes and habitat availability drive species' responses to climate change. Nature Climate Change 2014, 4, 127-131.
• Mair L, Thomas CD, Anderson BJ, Fox R, Botham M, Hill JK. Temporal variation in responses of species to four decades of climate warming. Global Change Biology 2012, 18, 2439-2447.
• McGowan PJK, Mair L, Symes A, Westrip JRS, Wheatley H, Brook S, Burton J, King S, McShea WJ, Moehlman PD, Smith AT, Wheeler JC, Butchart SHM. Tracking trends in the extinction risk of wild relatives of domesticated species to assess progress against global biodiversity targets. Conservation Letters 2018, 12(1), e12588.