Dr. Nicola Koper
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Canada R3T 2M6
Tel.: (204) 474-8768
Fax: (204) 261-0038
E-mail: nicola.koper@ad.umanitoba.ca
Website: Landscape Ecology and Conservation of Songbirds and Prarie Ecosystems Note:Dr. Koper will be away on Research/Study leave beginning on July 1, 2013 until Dec 31, 2013.
Education
B.Sc., University of Guelph, Ontario
M.Sc., University of Guelph, Ontario
Ph.D., University of Alberta, Alberta
Experience
Dr. Nicola Koper holds a faculty position in Terrestrial Ecology at the NRI. Her broad background is in landscape ecology, prairie and wetland ecology, multi-species management, surrogate species, and ecological statistics. Her research has involved a variety of vertebrates, including songbirds, ducks, shorebirds, freshwater turtles, and woodland caribou. The common thread that joins these topics is conservation biology.
Her current focus is in conservation and landscape ecology of prairie birds. Current projects explore conservation and habitat management for songbirds in mixed-grass and tall-grass prairies in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. For example, she is coordinating and managing a multidisciplinary long-term, large-scale adaptive management grazing experiment in southern Saskatchewan. In this study, she is experimentally manipulating grazing intensities in a hierarchical, replicated design to evaluate effects of habitat management on vegetation, invertebrate, and avian communities.
She has also conducted a multi-scale landscape ecology study on ducks, songbirds and shorebirds in the dry mixed-grass prairie of southern Alberta. This project focused on evaluating the conservation value of surrogate species by quantifying the effects of habitat management for ducks on coexisting species (upland and wetland songbirds and shorebirds). She also studied effects of cattle grazing, field size, and adjacency to roads and cropland on the density and productivity of prairie and wetland birds. She applied a hierarchical study design to determine whether the loss and fragmentation of grasslands had a greater effect on bird distributions and productivity, than local habitat characteristics such as vegetation structure and edge effects.
Other current research includes evaluation of the effects of habitat distribution, and disturbances such as logging and fire, on habitat selection by the threatened boreal ecotype of woodland caribou. As part of this research, she has been developing longitudinal data analysis methods for analyzing GPS-based telemetry data.
She has also conducted research on soil toxicity of by-products of the oil and gas industry. Some of this research involved developing non-linear regression methods for analyzing toxicity data. Other research has involved evaluating the environmental constraints on growth of painted turtles, and evaluating bias in mark-recapture population estimators.
She has also held positions on several non-academic committees, including
the Scientific Advisory Committee for Nature Conservancy Canada - Manitoba,
the Environmental Advisory Committee for the City of Edmonton, and the
Grasslands National Park of Canada Grazing Study Design Working Group.
Research Interests
Dr. Koper is interested in research that is theoretically relevant and innovative, but that also directly contributes to environmental and natural resource conservation and management. Her current primary interests are in landscape ecology and prairie ecology. Landscape ecology has particular relevance to conservation, as humans control a great deal of the habitat loss and fragmentation that influences species. She is interested in how the distribution of different types of habitat influences species persistence and productivity. In particular, she is interested in the role of type and distribution of matrix (avoided) habitats in sustaining populations. Much of her work in landscape ecology has been conducted in Canadian prairie and wetland systems, where we know far less about the importance of habitat distribution compared with forested systems. Ongoing landscape ecology projects focus on birds.
North American prairie ecosystems evolved in the presence of disturbances of grazing native ungulates, such as bison, and frequent fire-return intervals. However, both fire and native ungulates have been almost extirpated from these systems. Cattle may present a practical alternative to returning disturbance to the prairie landscape; nonetheless, it seems unlikely that effects of cattle on prairies are identical to effects of bison and wildfire. Dr. Koper is involved in several studies evaluating effects of cattle grazing and natural disturbances on native prairie ecosystems.
She is also interested in multi-species management strategies, particularly using surrogate species. Indicators, umbrellas, and flagship species are types of surrogates, and are frequently used in conservation and management plans. However, their effectiveness has not been sufficiently evaluated. She is interested in all types of surrogates, but focuses on avian species.
An important tool for evaluating the effectiveness of habitat management activities is adaptive management. This term is often misused, however, as it implies a great deal more than simply modifying management in response to observations. Active adaptive management involves applying multiple management scenarios to solve real-world problems, in a scientifically and statistically rigorous manner that allows evaluation of the relative effectiveness of each management strategy. She is currently involved in a long-term adaptive management grazing study being conducted in Grasslands National Park of Canada.
Although her primary interest is in ecology, she has spent a great deal of time developing and evaluating environmental statistics to support her research. Although statistics are a crucial tool for ecologists, the most common methods are often inadequate and lack power. Rather than apply inferior statistics to her research, her approach is to carefully evaluate existing methods, develop new statistics, or adapt existing statistics that are used in other scientific fields, to ecology.
Her research is primarily field-based, supported by statistical modeling and GIS analyses.
Dr. Koper is regularly accepting new graduate students, and frequently
hires summer research assistants. Students who are interested in working
with Dr. Koper in either capacity are encouraged to contact her.
News Release from University of Manitoba
Potential projects, information for students, and summer jobs
Selected Publications
Koper, N., Mozel, K.E., and Henderson, D.C. 2010. Recent declines in northern tall-grass prairies and effects of patch structure on community persistence. Biological Conservation, 143: 220-229.
Barnett, A.G., Koper, N., Dobson, A.J., Manseau, M., and Schmiegelow, F.K.A. 2010. Selecting the correct variance-covariance structure for longitudinal data in ecology: a comparison of Akaike, quasi-information and deviance information criteria. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. In press. 28pp.
Koper, N. and Manseau, M. 2009. Generalized estimating equations and generalized linear mixed-effects models for modeling resource selection. Journal of Applied Ecology, 46: 590-599.
Koper, N., Walker, D.J., and Champagne, J. 2009. Nonlinear effects of distance to habitat edge on Sprague's pipits in southern Alberta, Canada. Landscape Ecology, 24: 1287-1297.
Smith, A. C., Koper, N., Francis, C. M., and Fahrig, L. 2009. Confronting collinearity: comparing methods for disentangling effects of habitat loss and fragmentation. Landscape Ecology, 24: 1271-1285.
Koper, N., Henderson, D., Wilmshurst, J., Fargey, P., and Sissons, R. 2008. Design and analysis of rangeland experiments along continuous gradients. Rangeland Ecology and Management, 61(6): 605-613.
Koper, N. and Schmiegelow, F.K.A. 2007. "Does habitat management for duck productivity affect songbird nesting success?" Journal of Wildlife Management, 71: 2249-2257.
Koper, N., Schmiegelow, F.K.A., and Merrill, E.H. 2007. "Residuals cannot distinguish between ecological effects of habitat amount and fragmentation: implications for the debate". Landscape Ecology, 22: 811-820.
Koper, N., and Schmiegelow, F.K.A. 2006. "A multi-scaled analysis of avian response to habitat amount and fragmentation in the Canadian dry mixed-grass prairie". Landscape Ecology, 21: 1045-1059.
Koper, N., and Schmiegelow, F.K.A. 2006. "Effects of habitat management for ducks on target and non-target species". Journal of Wildlife Management, 70(3): 823-834
Stephenson, G.L., Princz J.I., Koper, N., Miasek, P.G. 2001. Terrestrial toxicity testing with volatile substances. In, Environmental Toxicology and Risk Assessment: Science, Policy, and Standardization – Implications for Environmental Decisions: Tenth Volume, ASTM STP 1403, B. M. Greenberg, R. N. Hull, M. H. Roberts, Jr., and R. W. Gensemer, Eds., American Society for Testing and Materials, West Conshohocken, PA, 2001: 230-252.
Stephenson, G.L., Feisthauer, N.C., Koper, N., McCann, J.H., and Scroggins, R.P. 2001. The influence of four types of water on seedling emergence and growth of barley and the toxic interaction with Copper Sulfate. In, Environmental Toxicology and Risk Assessment: Science, Policy and Standardization – Implications for Environmental Decisions: Tenth Volume, ASTM STP 1403, B.M. Greenberg, R.N. Hull, M.H. Roberts, Jr., and R.W. Gensemer, Eds., American Society for Testing and Materials, West Conshohocken, PA, 2001: 134-145.
Koper, N., and Brooks, R.J. 2000. Environmental constraints on growth of painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) in northern climates. Herpetologica, 56(4): 421-432.
Stephenson, G.L., Koper, N., Atkinson, G.F., Solomon, K.R., and Scroggins, R.P. 2000. Use of nonlinear regression techniques for describing concentration-response relationships for plant species exposed to contaminated site soils. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 19(12): 2968-2981.
Koper, N., and Brooks, R.J. 1998. Population estimators and unequal catchability in painted turtles. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 76(3): 458-465.
Krawchuk, M.A., Koper, N., and Brooks, R. J. 1997. Observations of a possible cleaning symbiosis between Painted Turtles, Chrysemys picta, and Snapping Turtles, Chelydra serpentina, in central Ontario. Canadian Field-Naturalist, 111(2): 315-317.
Brooks, R.J., Krawchuk, M.A., Stevens, C., and Koper, N. 1997. Testing
the precision and accuracy of age estimation using lines in scutes of
Chelydra serpentina and Chrysemys picta. Journal of Herpetology, 31(4):
521-529.