This is an integral projection model (IPM) kernel. IPMs describe population growth, survival and reproduction over a discrete time interval. Every time you visit this page it generates a unique IPM kernel. View the code on codepen.io.

Simon Rolph

Data Scientist at UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology

Coder, fern lover and tram enthusiast 🚋

Web things

Easily Missed - a tool to help iNaturalist observers identify local gaps in species records. It make suggestions of what species you should submit observations of to iNaturalist.

iNatGuessr - a Guessr-style game based on iNaturalist obervations, can you guess the location from the species?

iNaturalist Live - a constantly updating map and ticker showing activity of the wildlife recording website iNaturalist. Made using JavaScript and makes us of the iNaturalist API.

Hot Moths - What if we could talk to moths then made a dating app?!? Second place in #CDE22 Hackathon. Read the write up on DEVPOST here

COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database prototype user interface. The web app designed to improve accessing and contextualising plant demographic data. Built in the Python web framework: 'Flask'.

PhD Research

My PhD explored how comparative analyses of population models can provide insight into fundamental and applied questions about the nature of life history trade-offs and short-term responses to environmental change.

My research used the COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database alongside population modelling tools, integral projection models (IPMs) and matrix population models (MPMs), to produce simulated population models as an investigative framework for identifying best practices for comparative analyses. For my final PhD chapter I used a dataset tracking the fates of hundreds of Soay sheep over two decades.

I presented at a range of conferences, such as the Ecological Society of America's Annual Meeting in New Orleans and the British Ecological Society’s Annual meetings from 2016-2019 (plus special interest groups: Macrocology in 2019 and Quantative Ecology in 2018). At these conferences I helped run workshops about the COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database.

Thesis: The causes and consequences of demographic variation