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Mertes, Katherine

Research Ecologist

animal movement, remote sensing, GIS, species reintroductions, species occurrence and distribution modeling, conservation biology

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Professional Biography

  • Dr. Katherine Mertes is a Research Ecologist in the Conservation Ecology Center at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.

    Since 2017, Katherine has worked alongside CEC scientists Jared Stabach, Melissa Songer and Peter Leimgruber to support the reintroduction of scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah), addax (Addax nasomaculatus), and other highly endangered species to the Reserve de Faune du Ouadi Rimé-Ouadi Achim in Chad (RFOROA). This reintroduction project is a joint initiative of the Government of Chad and the Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi. In Chad, the project is implemented by SaharaConservation, in partnership with the Ministry for the Environment, Fisheries and Sustainable Development. As technical partners on the project, SNZCBI scientists fit tracking devices to reintroduced animals, track their movements after release, and analyze the resulting data to conduct fundamental research on endangered mammals, refine management practices, and assess the overall progress of the reintroduction. 

    Dr. Mertes's research combines remote sensing and field data on environmental conditions with animal occurrence and movement data to investigate how mobile individuals, populations and species perceive and respond to their environment. Her PhD dissertation evaluated the spatial scales (grains) at which species perceive and respond to environmental factors. From 2011 to 2015, she conducted focal sampling surveys and deployed solar-powered GPS/UHF/GSM tags on four bird species across Kenya, and demonstrated that each species responded to their environment at characteristic spatial grains. These "response grains" were associated with species attributes, primarily diet and home range size, and define important parameters for research and conservation - such as the optimal size and spacing of study sites, appropriate resolutions for remotely sensed data, and minimum effective area for management actions.

Public Biography

  • animal movement, remote sensing, GIS, species reintroductions, species occurrence and distribution modeling, conservation biology

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