Edward Shaw - Research Student

Edward Shaw

Telephone: 26284
Room: ICOSS Floor 4

Research Group

Research Project

Application and representation of the ecosystem service concept to aid weir management decision making

Ed is a PhD student within the Catchment Science Centre based at the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering. He graduated with an MBiolSci in Ecology at The University of Sheffield in 2007. His dissertation was on the role spatial prey subsidies play in determining the trophic population dynamics of food webs and his research project investigated the effect emergent insects have as a prey subsidy on the riparian food chain. After graduating Ed had a spell as a scientific officer at ADAS Boxworth working on a pesticide trial investigating into the pesticide´s effect on freshwater communities using a pond mesocosm facility.

Ed´s current research focuses on the benefits society receives from the River Don ecosystem (i.e. the ecosystem services it provisions) and how these can be altered by weir management. He is interested in how the value of their provision is determined by temporal, spatial and social axis, and what implications this has for decision making. Working as part of the URSULA project (www.ursula.ac.uk) he hopes to produce a decision support tool that combines real-to-life 3d visualisation techniques and indicators of ecosystem service provision to be used to evaluate the value of different weir modification options.