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Areas of Interest

Biodiversity Conservation
Spatial Ecology
Land Use/Land Cover Change
Biodiversity Conservation
Spatial Ecology
Land Use/Land Cover Change
Open Science
Biodiversity Conservation
Spatial Ecology
Land Use/Land Cover Change
Open Science

I am a spatial ecologist interested in biodiversity conservation, and in finding ways to contribute to sustainable management.

My research background focused on understanding how human related landscape alterations affect the persistence of species and the maintenance of ecological processes. This search led me to study species response to land use in amazingly diverse places from the Atlantic forest, to temperate wetlands in central Argentina, to the southwest corners of the Antarctic Peninsula. I addressed this question by integrating field-based and remotely sensed data with statistical modeling approaches to provide insights into ways in which landscapes can be manipulated to achieve conservation goals.

Now at Map of Life I am working with species distributions globally focusing on the integration of different types of geospatial data to help understand global biodiversity status and trends. This involves curating our ever-growing biodiversity database, developing biodiversity data sharing standards, modeling species distributions, and developing open-access tools to provide researchers, conservation partners and land managers with actionable information about the biodiversity in the places they work. I also have fun trying to understand taxonomy!

Hobbies

Hiking, gardening, watching soccer (a.k.a futbol!)

Marsh, CJ, YV Sica, CJ Burgin, WA Dorman, RC Anderson, ... , W Jetz. 2022. Expert range maps of global mammal distributions harmonised to three taxonomic authorities. Journal of Biogeography. doi:10.1111/jbi.14330

Sica, YV, RD Quintana, JN Bernardos, NC Calamari, GI Gavier-Pizarro. 2020. Wetland bird response to habitat composition and configuration at multiple spatial scales. Wetlands Conservation. doi:10.1007/s13157-019-01215-1

Sica, YV, GI Gavier-Pizarro, AM Pidgeon, A Travaini, J Bustamante, VC Radeloff, RD Quintana. 2018. Changes in bird assemblages in a wetland ecosystem after 14 years of intensified cattle farming. Austral Ecology. doi:10.1111/aec.12621

Sica, YV, RD Quintana, VC Radeloff, GI Gavier-Pizarro. 2016. Wetland loss due to land use change in the Lower Paraná River Delta, Argentina. Science of the Total Environment. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.04.200

Sica, YV, SP Bravo, MI Giombini. 2014. Spatial Pattern of Pindó Palm (Syagrus romanzoffiana) Recruitment in Argentinian Atlantic Forest: The Importance of Tapir and Effects of Defaunation.  Biotropica. doi:10.1111/btp.12152