Amelia Sarah Arif

Long-term Recovery of Temperate Woodland Tree-Microbial Interactions and Bird Species Richness Post-Agricultural Land Abandonment

Amelia is a DPhil student investigating the long-term recovery of ecosystem complexity in European temperate woodlands following farmland abandonment. Her research focuses on the recovery of interaction networks between microbial communities and tree species as a metric of ecosystem complexity. She also explores bird species richness as an additional metric to determine the recovery of temperate woodland bird species. These recovery dynamics are evaluated across a 300-year chronosequence of recovering oak-dominated temperate woodlands in southeast England.

Amelia holds a BSc in Biology and a MEnvSc in Conservation and Biodiversity from the University of Toronto. Between BSc, MEnvSc, and DPhil, she has gained experience across a range of professional environments, including working as a Policy Analyst implementing the Endangered Species Act, 2007 and environmental permissions in Ontario, serving as a team lead in a Covid-19 laboratory, and contributing to eDNA and invasive species research at the University of Toronto.