Dr Nicky Dobson

Qualifications

• PhD / DPhil

Summary

Nicky is an intertidal marine ecologist with interests in intertidal communities, environmental change, ecological adaptations and symbiosis. Previous research has examined the visual ecology of crustaceans – specifically those of symbiotic shrimps from tropical reefs. Nicky was the Project Officer for the Yorkshire Hub on the national Heritage Lottery Fund project ‘Capturing Our Coast’ (CoCoast). This project focused on the training of citizen scientist to collect baseline data on the distribution and abundance of intertidal species – with the hub training over 250 citizen scientist during the 3 year project. The CoCoast project aimed to better understand the impacts of climate change and other environmental and human factors, for the purpose of informing future policy and conservation strategies. Nicky co-lead on the development of the CoastXplore app designed as a monitoring tool for smartphones and tablets to capture data on coastal usage and activities. Nicky is also currently part of a research project working with DAERA on ‘Accelerating Green and Blue Recovery’ to refine predictive blue carbon habitat models for prioritising restoration and field methodologies for estimating blue carbon values.