Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit Staff Member
Christian Che-Castaldo
Assistant Unit Leader
Phone: (608 264-0809) -
Email: cche-castaldo@usgs.gov
Faculty Email: checastaldo@wisc.edu
Biography
Dr. Che-Castaldo received his Ph.D. in Behavior, Ecology, Evolution and Systematics from the University of Maryland, College Park. He was an IACS Postdoctoral Fellow at Stony Brook University's Institute for Advanced Computational Science, a Research Scientist at the Mount St. Helens Institute and a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University, before joining the Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit in 2023.
Dr. Che-Castaldo is a quantitative ecologist interested in population and community ecology, primary succession, and building pipelines to facilitate species conservation. His research focuses on combining remote sensing with long-term ecological data using Bayesian hierarchical models, with an emphasis on high-performance computing, forecasting, and reproducible science. Dr. Che-Castaldo is a co-developer of the Antarctic Penguin Biogeography Project, an open-access decision support tool designed for Southern Ocean managers, scientists, and the public. He also has a long-standing interest in the ecological recovery of Mount St. Helens following its 1980 volcanic eruption.
Areas of Expertise
Entomology, GIS/Spatial Analysis, Landscape Ecology, Population Dynamics, Population and Community Ecology, Remote Sensing, Species Distribution Modeling, Statistics and Modelling
Taxon Groups Studied
Amphibians, Invertebrates/Insects