Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit Staff Member


Christian Che-Castaldo

Christian Che-Castaldo

Assistant Unit Leader
Phone: (608 264-0809) -
Email: cche-castaldo@usgs.gov
Faculty Email: checastaldo@wisc.edu

News:

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

Climate Change, Entomology, GIS/Spatial Analysis, Landscape Ecology, Managed Flows/Hydrology, Marine/Coastal Ecology, Movement Ecology, Population Dynamics, Population and Community Ecology, Remote Sensing, Species Distribution Modeling, Statistics and Modelling

Taxon Groups Studied

Amphibians, Coastal/Marine Birds, Invertebrates/Insects, Mussels

Research Publications Publication Date
Şen, B., C. Che-Castaldo, H. J. Lynch, F. Ventura, M. A. LaRue and S. Jenouvrier. 2024. Detecting stochasticity in population time series using a non-parametric test of intrinsic predictability. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 15:1834–1846. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.14423. | Abstract | Download | Publisher Website August 2024
Wu, H., C. Flynn, C. Hall, C. Che-Castaldo, D. Samaras, M. Schwaller and H. J. Lynch. 2024. Penguin colony georegistration using camera pose estimation and phototourism. PLOS ONE 9(10): e0311038. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311038 | Abstract | Download | Publisher Website October 2024
Şen, B., C. Che-Castaldo and H. R. Akçakaya. 2024. The potential for species distribution models to distinguish source populations from sinks. Journal of Animal Ecology, 00:1–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365- 2656.14201 | Abstract | Download | Publisher Website October 2024
Dolfi, Amelie
Post Doc
dolfi@wisc.edu

Khadka, Bijit
PhD
khadka2@wisc.edu

Presentations Presentation Date
Şen, B., S. Jenouvrier and C. Che-Castaldo. 2024. Quantifying the short- and long-term predictability of Adélie penguin populations. American Geophysical Union Conference, Washington DC. December 2024
DuVivier, A.K., K. Krumhardt, L. Landrum, Z. Sylvester, C. Che-Castaldo, A. Eparvier, M. M. Holland, S. Jenouvrier, S. Labrousse, M. LaRue, C. Nissen, B. Şen and C. M. Brooks. 2025. Quantifying the value of Antarctic polynyas on the ecosystem from phytoplankton to penguins. American Meteorological Society Denver Summit, Denver, CO. May 2025
Che-Castaldo, C., M. Schwaller and H. J. Lynch. 2024. Identifying population tipping points through imagery super-resolution. NASA Biological Diversity and Ecological Conservation Team Meeting, Silver Spring, MD. July 2024
Che-Castaldo, C. and M. Schwaller. 2024. Scaling up: Satellite super-resolution modeling for large-scale penguin population monitoring. International Statistical Ecology Conference, Swansea, Wales, UK. July 2024