About the Author

Thank you for visiting my blog! My name is Evan Hockridge and I am a PhD student in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. I am an ecologist (very much) in training and a member of Dr. Andrew Davies' laboratory where we focus on ecological questions that are spatial in nature. More particularly, our lab studies animal-landscape interactions. While at the time of me writing this blog I have not chosen a particular topic for my dissertation, I am interested in several broad areas. Geographically, I am very keen on working in African savanna and tropical rain forest systems to study some of the world's last extant megafauna - in addition to some truly incredible smaller critters. I am very interested in understanding how animals can have a disproportionately large impact on the systems in which they live by driving important carbon and other biogeochemical cycles, spatially arrange the niches of other organisms, restructure ecosystems with truly global consequences, and act as an important buffer to changes in the Earth system as a whole as caused by humans. I firmly believe that animals are much more important for regulation of large scale phenomena than they are generally conceived to be and I hope to convey some of the reasons why in this blog.

My background is largely in the field of remote sensing, or the science of extracting measurements from environments without directly interacting with them. My expertise is in ultra high-resolution remote sensing methods centered around unmanned aerial systems (UAS), or colloquially drones. I was first exposed to drone aircraft at the start of my undergraduate study in UAS at Purdue University in 2015. At Purdue, I quickly realized the potential for the technology to change scientific study. Jumping in on the drone market before there were regulations in the US, I had the opportunity to work with scientists as a resident drone expert as methods to use UAS were being invented. I have utilized drones to collect data in a variety of fields including ecology, forestry, agriculture, aviation, supply chain management, and oceanography.

Outside of research and academia, I am very passionate about hiking, photography, aviation, and nature in general. My hope is that people will walk away from reading this blog with a new found appreciation for how animals literally shape the world around them, how conservation of nature is equal parts conservation of humanity, and how understanding where things happen in space can be as important as understanding what happens in the first place.

Photo taken by Stephanie Friedman