Dr Eleanor Thomson

Eleanor Thomson is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the School of Geography and the Environment, specialising in ecological remote sensing and machine learning with a focus on tropical forest ecosystems. She is currently working on a Bertarelli Marine Science Project investigating the importance of seabird nutrients to terrestrial and marine island ecosystems.

Eleanor teaches the 'Remote Sensing of the Biosphere' course on the NERC Doctoral Training Programme and has taught Preliminary Examination and Final Honours School tutorials at Jesus, Mansfield and Regents Colleges. Alongside her academic research, Eleanor is a Lead Technologist at Gentian Ltd, a green start-up applying high-resolution imagery and deep learning techniques to map and monitor biodiversity.

Eleanor received her PhD from Oxford in 2022. He research involved working with drone, aircraft and satellite imagery to scale up vegetation properties from the plot to the landscape level. She has an MSc in Environmental Change and Management and a BA in Geography.

Eleanor is a member of the Ecosystems Lab and the Seascape Ecology Lab. Her current research is funded by the Bertarelli Foundation and is a joint project between Oxford, Exeter and Lancaster Universities investigating how seabird nutrients affect forest and marine productivity on tropical islands across the Indo-Pacific. The project works closely with local partners in the Seychelles and French Polynesia to support tropical island conservation and restoration. Drone and satellite imagery is used to scale up field measurements across islands.

• Thomson, E.R., Spiegel, M.P., Althuizen, I.H., et al. (2021) Multiscale mapping of plant functional groups and plant traits in the High Arctic using field spectroscopy, UAV imagery and Sentinel-2A data. Environmental Research Letters, 16(5), 055006.
• Thomson, E.R., Malhi, Y., Bartholomeus, H., et al. (2018) Mapping the leaf economic spectrum across West African tropical forests using UAV-acquired hyperspectral imagery. Remote Sensing, 10(10), 1532.
• Doughty, C.E., Cheesman, A.W., Riutta, T., Thomson, E.R., Shenkin, A., Nottingham, A.T., Telford, E.M., Huasco, W., Majalap, N., Arn Teh, Y. and Meir, P. (2021) Predicting tropical tree mortality with leaf spectroscopy. Biotropica, 53(2): 581-595. Winner of the 2022 Biotropica paper of the year award.
• Duporge, I., Spiegel, M.P., Thomson, E.R., Chapman, T., Lamberth, C., Pond, C., Macdonald, D.W., Wang, T. and Klinck, H. (2021) Determination of optimal flight altitude to minimise acoustic drone disturbance to wildlife using species audiograms. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 12(11): 2196-2207.