Abigail Starkey

About me:

I am an alumna from Queen Mary University of London. I read my undergraduate degree in BSc Biology and later specialised with a postgraduate in MSc Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. My academic background initially focused on the core principles of Biology, and ultimately developed a deeper understanding of biological systems and their cascades during my specialisation. I have enjoyed studying the micro-components of life which scale up to the processes which form the large-scale functions of ecological systems and our environment.

About my research

I am a PhD student at the Centre for Environmental and Climate Research, working on the MISTRA BioPath Project. My research focuses on credibly mapping the impact of agricultural practice and management on biodiversity. My research aims to develop methods for a certification that relate agricultural land use and management to the subsequent impacts on biodiversity. 

Demands for biodiversity impact reports are increasing, along with the development of different methods for this; all with different resolution, data needs, biodiversity indicators, etc. Indicator selection is dictated by the availability of data and which values of biodiversity one wants to reflect. Therefore, a central question is how sensitive are biodiversity evaluations to the choice of indicators, and which biodiversity impacts can they credibly reflect?

Ultimately, I would like to map, evaluate, develop and test various indicators for biodiversity to be used in a certification scheme by the agricultural sector. To this end, I will investigate which indicators for biological diversity are used in existing certifications and agricultural practices and how these reflect the different values of diversity. Through analyses of existing data, my project aims to investigate how sensitive assessments and certifications are to the choice of indicator, and to what extent the choice of indicator reflects the biodiversity values that producers intend to capture with the systems.