School of Geography and the Environment

Dr Lisa Wedding is an Associate Professor in Physical Geography and a Tutorial Fellow of Worcester College, the University of Oxford, where she leads The Oxford Seascape Ecology Lab. She is Associate Editor for the npj Ocean Sustainability journal and Editorial Board Member for the Landscape Ecology journal. Dr Wedding previously held a Research Associate position at the Center for Ocean Solutions, Stanford University, and was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the University of California at Santa Cruz, USA.

Dr Wedding's research focuses on understanding the social-ecological causes and consequences of spatial patterns and ecological processes in the marine environment. Increasingly, her research is positioned at the interface between science and policy and where she often works with a highly interdisciplinary team of lawyers, social scientists, and practitioners to link place-based scientific research findings to inform ocean governance.

Dr Wedding's Oxford Seascape Ecology Lab is centred on three main thematic areas of research, including 1) seascape ecology and conservation; 2) cultural seascapes and ecosystem services and; 3) linking geospatial data science to ocean governance solutions. Read more about these research areas on the lab's research page. Learn more about our current Bertarelli-funded project where our team is studying island restoration and land-sea ecological connectivity.

Undergraduate

Dr Wedding co-leads the Geographical Techniques and Physical Geography Fieldwork courses for first year students of the Oxford Geography degree, focused on field and analytical techniques for ecological sampling. She also teaches the marine ecology content in the Prelims foundational course 'Earth System Processes' and the Final Honour School foundational course 'Environmental Geography'. Dr Wedding developed and co-leads the Final Honour School option 'Geographic Data Science'.

Postgraduate

Dr Wedding developed the 'Seascape Ecology and Conservation' elective module for the SoGE MSc/MPhil programmes. She also teaches the marine ecology content in the MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management core modules. In addition, Dr Wedding leads the 'Coral Reefs in the Anthropocene' lecture course for the Environmental Change and Management MSc students in the School of Geography and the Environment. She was awarded Teaching Development and Enhancement Project Funding in 2021 to develop a new postgraduate elective module on "Diversifying the Curriculum Through Multiple Ways of Knowing".

Current Graduate Research Students

Academic Advising

At SoGE, Lisa leads research in each of these sub-themes:

• Integrating seascape ecology and remote sensing to study land-sea connectivity to evaluate marine conservation strategies, inform biocultural restoration and support spatial management decisions.
• Applying advanced geospatial technologies to illuminate climate change effects on coastal social-ecological resilience and tipping points.
• Prioritising cooperative, interdisciplinary approaches to seascape research to support mapping of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and cultural value at sea.
• Linking geospatial data science to ocean governance solutions and answering place-based management questions in order to address complex socio-ecological challenges.

She encourages individuals wishing to undertake graduate research relating to the main themes of The Oxford Seascape Ecology Lab to visit the 'Join Us' page that details information for prospective students.

For a full list of Dr Wedding's publications beyond 2019, please see Google Scholar and ResearchGate.

2023

• Wright, R., Jackson, K., Girardin, C., Smith, N. and Wedding, L. (2023) GC Insights: Enhancing inclusive engagement with the geosciences through art-science collaborations. Geoscience Communication, 6: 39-43.

2022

• Frazão Santos, C., Agardy, T., Allison, E.H., Bennett, N.J., Blythe, J.L., Calado, H., Crowder, L.B., Day, J.C., Flannery, W., Gissi, E., Gjerde, K.M., Gobin, J.F., Mulalap, C.Y., Orbach, M., Pecl, G., Scherer, M., Shelton, A.J., Vieira da Silva, C., Villasante, S. and Wedding, L. (2022) A sustainable ocean for all. Npj Ocean Sustainability, 1(1). Article 1.
• Malhi, Y., Lander, T., le Roux, E., Stevens, N., Macias-Fauria, M., Wedding, L., Girardin, C., Kristensen, J.A., Sandom, C.J., Evans, T.D., Svenning, J.C. and Canney, S. (2022) The role of large wild animals in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Current Biology, 32(4). R181-R195.
• Palola, P., Bailey, R. and Wedding, L. (2022) A novel framework to operationalise value-pluralism in environmental valuation: Environmental value functions. Ecological Economics, 193. 107327.
• Palola, P., Wedding, L., van der Grient, J. and Bailey, R. (2022) Assessing Future Marine Ecosystem Service Values: Value-Pluralism and Non-Additive Effects of Multiple Interacting Stressors. SSRN Scholarly Paper. No. 4025117.
• Pittman, S.J., Stamoulis, K.A., Antonopoulou, M., Das, H.S., Shahid, M., Delevaux, J., Wedding, L.M. and Mateos-Molina, D. (2022) Rapid site selection to prioritize coastal seascapes for nature-based solutions with multiple benefits. Frontiers in Marine Science, 571.
• Wedding, L.M., Green, S.J., Reiter, S., Arrigo, K.R., Hazen, L., Ruckelshaus, M., van der Grient, J.M.A., Bailey, R.M., Cameron, M.A., Leape, J., Levi, M., Merkl, A., Mills, M.M., Monismith, S., Ouellette, N.T., van Dijken, G. and Micheli, F. (2022) Linking multiple stressor science to policy opportunities through network modeling. Marine Policy, 146. 105307.
• Wedding, L.M., Reiter, S., Moritsch, M., Hartge, E., Reiblich, J., Gourlie, D. and Guerry, A. (2022) Embedding the value of coastal ecosystem services into climate change adaptation planning. PeerJ, 10. e13463.

2021

• Claudet, J., Malhi, Y., Ban, N., et al. (2021) Biodiversity and Nature-Based Solutions. In, Blue Climate Initiative: Transformational Opportunities for People, Ocean, Planet. The Blue Climate Initiative.
• Lawrence, A., Heenan, A., Levine, A., Haddaway, N.R., Powell, F., Wedding, L., et al. (2021) Spatial and temporal scales of coral reef fish ecological research and management: a systematic map protocol. Environmental Evidence, 10(1): 1-11.
• Lepczyk, C.A., Wedding, L.M., Asner, G.P., Pittman, S.J., Goulden, T., Linderman, M.A., Gang, J. and Wright, R. (2021) Advancing Landscape and Seascape Ecology from a 2D to a 3D Science. BioScience. biab001.
• Moritsch, M.M., Young, M., Carnell, P., Macreadie, P.I., Lovelock, C., Nicholson, E., Raimondi, P.T., Wedding, L.M. and Ierodiaconou, D. (2021) Estimating blue carbon sequestration under coastal management scenarios. Science of The Total Environment, 777. 145962.
• Pittman, S.J., Yates, K.L., Bouchet, P.J., Alvarez-Berastegui, D., et al. (2021) Seascape ecology: Identifying research priorities for an emerging ocean sustainability science. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 663: 1-29.
• Raj, D.K., Aeby, G.S., Mathews, G., Williams, G.J., Caldwell, J.M., et al. (2021) Coral reef resilience differs among islands within the Gulf of Mannar, southeast India, following successive coral bleaching events. Coral Reefs, 40: 1029-1044.
• Stuart, C.E., Wedding, L.M., Pittman, S.J. and Green, S.J. (2021) Habitat Suitability Modeling to Inform Seascape Connectivity Conservation and Management. Diversity, 13(10). Article 10.
• Wedding, L.M., Moritsch, M., Verutes, G., Arkema, K., Hartge, E., Reiblich, J., Douglass, J., Taylor, S. and Strong, A.L. (2021) Incorporating blue carbon sequestration benefits into sub-national climate policies. Global Environmental Change. 102206.

2020

• Aeby, G.S., Howells, E., Work, T., Abrego, D., Williams, G.J., Wedding, L.M., Caldwell, J.M., Moritsch, M. and Burt, J.A. (2020) Localized outbreaks of coral disease on Arabian reefs are linked to extreme temperatures and environmental stressors. Coral Reefs: 1-18.
• Arrigo, K.R., van Dijken, G.L., Cameron, M.A., van der Grient, J., Wedding, L.M., et al. (2020) Synergistic interactions among growing stressors increase risk to an Arctic ecosystem. Nature Communications, 11(1): 1-8.
• Reiter, S.M., Post, D., Wedding, L.M. and Strong, A.L. (2020) The Future of the Public Trust: The Muddied Waters of Rockweed Management in Maine. Ocean and Coastal Law Journal, 25(2). 325.
• Stock, A., Subramaniam, A., Van Dijken, G.L., Wedding, L.M., et al. (2020) Comparison of Cloud-Filling Algorithms for Marine Satellite Data. Remote Sensing, 12(20). 3313.

2019

• Chung, A., Wedding, L.M., Green, A.L., Friedlander, A.M., Goldberg, G., Meadows, A. and Hixon, M.A. (2019) Building Coral Reef Resilience Through Spatial Herbivore Management. Frontiers in Marine Science, 6.
• Chung, A., Wedding, L.M., Meadows, A., Moritsch, M., Donovan, M.K., Gove, G., and Hunter, C. (2019) Prioritizing Reef Resilience through Spatial Planning following a Mass Coral Bleaching Event. Coral Reefs, 38: 837-850. Brainard, R. and Eakin, M. (eds.).
• Jouffray, J.B., Wedding, L.M., Norström, A.V., Donovan, M.K., Williams, G.J., Crowder, L.B., Erickson, A.L., Friedlander, A.M., Graham, N.A.J., Gove, J.M., Kappel, C.V., Kittinger, J.N., Lecky, J., Oleson, K.L.L., Selkoe, K.A., White, C., Williams, I.D. and Nyström, M. (2019) Parsing human and biophysical drivers of coral reef regimes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 286(1896).
• Reiblich, J., Hartge, E., Wedding, L.M., Killian, S. and Verutes, G.M. (2019) Bridging Climate Science, Law, and Policy to Advance Coastal Adaptation Planning. Marine Policy, 104: 125-134.
• Wedding, L.M., Jorgensen, S., Lepczyk, C. and Friedlander, A.M. (2019) Remote Sensing of Three-dimensional Coral Reef Structure Enhances Predictive Modeling of Fish Assemblages. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation.
• Williams, G., Graham, N., Jouffray, J.B., Norström, A., Nyström, M., Gove, J., Heenan, A. and Wedding, L.M. (2019) Coral Reef Ecology in the Anthropocene. Functional Ecology.