Co-founder of the Fish + Forest Project

I am an Associate Professor in Geography at McGill University. My research focuses on the advancement of remote sensing applications in environmental science. I study aquatic habitats of endemic and endangered ichthyofauna, producing the first aerial and underwater 3D reconstructions of riverscapes in Brazil. My research also examines large-scale land use change for biodiversity conservation from satellite imagery and contributes to satellite data product validation.

My lab (the Applied Remote Sensing Lab - ARSL) is one of the world’s leading facilities in cutting edge applied UAS research, with expertise in systems integration, hyperspectral data, LiDAR, thermal imaging and SfM photogrammetry.

In 2014, I was awarded the Fessenden Prize for Science Innovation and in 2018, the Silver Medal from the Canadian Remote Sensing Society, the highest mid-career achievement award recognizing excellence in remote sensing in Canada. I am a member of the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science and a co-investigator with the Canadian Airborne Biodiversity Observatory (CABO).

Co-founder of the Fish + Forest Project

Oliver Lucanus is a wildlife photographer with a special interest in aquatic habitats and the plight of freshwater around the world. He has documented fish habitats in over thirty countries and published over two hundred popular science articles in seven languages as well as several books on fish in nature. After publishing “the Amazon Below Water” showing over 200 species of Amazonian fishes in nature, his next book, in collaboration with Leandro Sousa and the Fish + Forest Project will be focused on the Xingu river in Brazil, showing most of the river’s endemic species in their natural habitat.

When not looking for fish under water he works at McGill University’s Applied Remote Sensing Lab (ARSL), flying a wide variety of drones and sensors to collect data for scientific applications. Freshwater habitats all over the planet are changing, and threatening an increasing number of species. His main focus is using remote sensing techniques such as Structure from Motion photogrammetry, hyperspectral imaging, satellite image classification and LiDAR to gain a better understanding of fish habitats. His peer reviewed publications examine freshwater fish biotopes in Ghana, Brazil, Tanzania, and Papua-New Guinea. The Fish+Forest Project unites his passion for fish and using modern science to capture nature at a greater scale.

Co-founder of the Fish + Forest Project

As a multidisciplinary scientist from Costa Rica, with research experience in forestry, ecology, diversity assessments, GIS, remote sensing and landscape ecology, Pablo has carried out research projects in several countries across the Americas and Africa. His latest work, the completion of a Forestry GIS for Costa Rica with a database of over 250,000 trees across five conservation areas is being used as the ground truth information for the Mission Airborne Carbon 13, the first Canadian airborne hyperspectral campaign in Costa Rica.

Leandro Sousa is an Ichthyologist and Professor of Biology at the Universidade Federal do Pará, Brazil, located right in front of the Xingu rapids. He carries out extensive field trips with local fishermen to try to understand the amazing loricariid diversity found in the Xingu river. Over the course of his career (since 2000 until the present) he travelled extensively throughout Brazil and is passionate about how ornamental fishermen catch armored catfishes in the rapids of the Tapajós and Xingu rivers. Today he uses scuba diving techniques to locate and record the fishes, the rocks they live in, as well as how fishermen catch them. Since 2014 he is leading the Conservation Breeding Project of Xingu Endemic species at the University, focused mainly on Hypancistrus zebra and other Loricariidae.

I am originally from Brazil where I am an Associate Professor at the Federal University of Mato Grosso and coordinate the Tropical Ichthyology Laboratory.

I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Uberlândia (1998), MSc degree in Ecology and Conservation from the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (2001), and received my PhD in in Biology of Freshwaters and Continental Fisheries, from from National Institute of Amazonian Research (2008). In 2021, I concluded my postdoc at Mississippi State University, where I worked on analyzing a large dataset from the Teles Pires River, focusing on fish-forest interactions and seed dispersal by fish. Topics of interest include fish behavior, fish-forest interactions, and the effects of parasites on fish behavior. My work is strongly field-oriented, with studies conducted in streams and rivers of the Tapajos Basin.

Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto
M.Sc. in Biological Science, Florida State University
B.Sc. in Marine Science & Biology, University of Tampa

I'm an incoming Assistant Professor at University of Louisville and currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Michigan's Museum of Paleontology. My research focuses on several main questions: (1) why do we have such a diversity of fish forms (anatomy), (2) how do these shapes relate to a fish’s role (ecology), (3) how do traits arise and how do multiple traits interact to create complexity (the slippery word that it is)?

My research group uses high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scanning, digital modeling, videography of animal behavior, and next-gen molecular sequencing to answer how and why fishes are adapted to perform certain tasks. These methods allow me to answer questions like, how do ecological ‘oddballs’ like lepidophagous (scale-feeding) fishes evolve? What earlier ecologies gave rise to such a specialized diet as only eating the scales & slime of other fishes? How do piranhas replace their teeth and how was this system co-opted from herbivorous ancestors for feeding on flesh?

Why study fishes? There are 35,672 species of fishes – that is more species than any other vertebrate (animals with backbones) group combined. That diversity leaves plenty of questions to answer and ample opportunities to explore how phenotypic evolution is influenced by ecology. The fishes my lab studies range from Amazonian freshwater stingrays to little armored marine fishes called poachers (a misnomer for sure) that grow scales on their eyeballs and ‘parachute’ while sinking. While my main focus is understanding how evolution gives rise to these many shapes and strategies, I’m always on the look-out for how biology can inform engineering and architectural principles.

Tatiana graduated with a Biological Sciences degree from the State University of Londrina (2000) and and a PhD in Ecology from the Federal University in Rio Grande do Sul (2008). She has experience in ecology and genetics, with an emphasis on environmental mutagenesis and ecotoxicology. She completed a Post-doctorate at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, working in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Genomics - Metagenome Project. She is currently an Associate Professor at the Federal University of Pará, Brazil. She is a researcher in the field of ecotoxicology and is a professor in the Post Graduate Program in Biodiversity and Conservation (academic master's degree). She also serves as a member of the Committee on Ethics in the Use of Animals (CEUA-UFPA) and as secretary of the Brazilian Society of Ecotoxicology (Management 2021-2023)

Hans – G. Evers (born 1964 and still living in Hamburg, Germany) has been an aquarist for most of his life. Starting as a kid with cichlids and livebearers he very soon became most interested in catfish and is today a worldwide known specialist for Corydoras and loricariid catfishes as well as characins. He collected freshwater fish in South America, Asia and Oceania and brought home many new species for the science and the aquarium hobby. Hundreds of publications in the aquarium and scientific literature are a proof for his keen interest in the biology of freshwater fishes. Two species (Corydoras eversi and Oryzias eversi) were named after him.

I am an ichthyologist, associated scientist and lecturer at the University of Vienna. I am also an addicted aquarist, and in both aspects of interest my main focus is on cichlid fishes of Western Africa. Here, I mainly work with systematics, evolutionary biology and behavior of these fishes, but over the last few years another main focus has been conservation biology of riverine cichlids of this region. A second interest of mine are anabantoid fishes from Asia, many species of which are also found in areas facing increasing environmental pressures.
I carried out many field trips to Africa, South East Asia, Australia, Central America and South America to study and to collect fish in their natural environment, and to understand both their ecological needs and the state of the habitats. Also, I've authored more than 450 papers (both academic and hobbyist) in eleven languages, including six books and contributions to ~40 additional books (both aquaristic and scientific).
I also promote several ex-situ conservation programs, in cooperation with scientific institutions and public aquariums as well as with private groups (federations and clubs) of aquarists, and also hope that given my extensive expertise that I can provide useful input for in-situ conservation.

Profile coming soon!

Wladimir graduated with an Agronomist degree from the Federal University of Viçosa (1994) and an MSc in Environmental Science from the Federal University of Mato Grosso, Sinop Campus(2019). He is experienced in environmental impact assessments with emphasis on mining impacts throughout the Brazilian Amazon. He has worked as a Brazilian Federal Police expert for environmental crimes since 2009 in the southern Brazilian Amazon. His research focuses on the artisanal and small-scale gold mining operations, monitoring their geographical distribution and time space dynamics related with impacts on rivers, riparian forests and cleared areas. He is part of the Gold Mining Team of the National Institute of Criminalistics (INC) of the Brazilian Federal Police (since 2021), whose main focus is to study new technologies to track the origin of seized illegal gold. He also works out of the Tropical Ichthyology Laboratory at the Federal University of Mato Grosso.

Click on the photographs below to view as a slideshow!

Gillian Rowan is a M.Sc. student in the Applied Remote Sensing Laboratory (ARSL) in McGill University's Geography department where she studies remote sensing of aquatic ecosystems. After graduating with a Bachelor of Environmental Science in biodiversity and conservation from McGill University, she worked as the Coordinator of Environmental Affairs for Air Canada. In this position she was involved with carbon reporting, waste management, corporate outreach, and community engagement. Gillian's current research examines how remote sensing can be applied to underwater plants, what its limitations are in the aquatic medium, and what information we can reliably use remote sensing to collect. In collecting spectral information about a variety of species of aquatic plants and different water types, she is examining how spectrally separable the plants are under various modelled conditions. Understanding and defining the spectral separability of aquatic plants will allow future researchers and ecosystem managers to better target their monitoring efforts and thus increase the efficiency of conservation efforts in aquatic ecosystems.

Check out Gillian's 2021 Canadian Symposium on Remote Sensing presentation and most recent publications below! Visit her ARSL profile to view her full list of publications, software and data sets.

Patrick Osei Darko is a PhD student in the Applied Remote Sensing Laboratory (ARSL) in the department of Geography, McGill University. He is supervised by Prof. Margaret Kalacska and Dr. Pablo Arroyo-Mora. Patrick's research explores how hyperspectral remote sensing techniques based on airborne and UAV technology can be used for mapping forest traits and species composition in support of global forest conservation efforts and climate change mitigation strategies. Patrick is an experienced mining professional from Ghana who is very passionate about the applications of remote sensing techniques for questions related to environmental sustainability. He was part of a team in the mining industry that implemented a continent-wide information system for land and environmental management which received the Special Achievement (SAG) award in 2018 from ESRI. After his undergraduate degree in Geomatic Engineering (2011), Patrick continued to earn a postgraduate degree in same field (2013-2016) where he evaluated the utility and effectiveness of remote sensing technologies such as Earth observation satellites (such as Landsat) and LiDAR for assessing periodic changes in reclaimed tropical forests in Ghana, West Africa.

Check out Patrick's most recent publications below! Visit his ARSL profile to view his full list of publications and data sets.

Brendan Cottrell is a MSc student in the Applied Remote Sensing Laboratory in McGill University's Geography department where he studies the application of remote sensing and drone technology in marine mammal conservation. Brendan graduated from Simon Fraser University with a Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics, later finishing an Advanced Certificate in Geographic Information Systems from the British Columbia Institute of Technology. After graduating from Simon Fraser University, Brendan worked with the British Columbia Marine Mammal Response Network where he was involved in marine mammal rescue, necropsies, and research. Brendan's current research is examining the ability of drones and remote sensing techniques to characterize and catalogue the prevalence and severity of entanglement scarring on large whales such as humpbacks. The collection of baseline data on large whale entanglement rates and impact allows for both fisheries and marine mammal managers to implement more effective solutions in limiting these events.

Deep Inamdar is a Ph.D. candidate at McGill University in the Applied Remote Sensing Laboratory (ARSL). He is also a research assistant responsible for processing the hyperspectral imaging data collected for the Canadian Airborne Biodiversity Observatory, an initiative to understand the changes in plant biodiversity on a local, regional, and national scale using spectronomics. Deep completed his undergraduate degree at McMaster University in the Integrated Science program, concentrating in Mathematics and Statistics. During his undergraduate studies, Deep was a research assistant at the National Research Council of Canada in the Flight Research Laboratory, where he developed image processing and analysis tools. Deep is interested in developing tools to study peatland ecosystems with remote sensing technologies. His work aims to model the resilience of peatlands to climate change and the consequences of destabilized ecosystems.

Check out Deep's most recent publications below! Visit his ARSL profile to view his full list of publications, software and virtual reality data sets.

Kathryn Elmer is currently pursuing her M.Sc. in Geography at McGill University as part of the Applied Remote Sensing Lab (ARSL), and received her B.Sc. in Earth System Sciences from McGill University in 2017. She previously worked for the National Research Council of Canada’s Flight Research Lab (Ottawa, Ontario) and ARSL at McGill University (Montreal, Quebec), where she contributed to research on a variety of topics including the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as remote sensing platforms for ecological monitoring, satellite simulations, spatial accuracy of UAV platforms for 3D landscape reconstructions, and various field work campaigns. Her thesis focuses on using remote sensing technology, specifically hyperspectral imagery (HSI) acquired using airborne and UAV platforms, for identifying and mapping the highly invasive plant species Phragmites australis subs. australis. Her field site is Îles-de-Boucherville National Park and she is working to provide the park management team with a park-wide Phragmites identification map. Her work aims to help establish remote sensing and HSI as an effective tool for the management of invasive species around the world.

Check out Kathryn's most recent publications below! Visit her ARSL profile to view her full list of publications, software and data sets.