NWT welcomes Airy Peralta to join our team of grad students this summer

Niwot Ridge LTER is welcoming some exciting new additions to our NWT team this summer! We will be posting introductions/welcomes to each new researcher in the upcoming weeks. This week we would like to welcome Airy Peralta, who is joining us as a graduate student working on pika research:

“My name is Airy Peralta, and I am from Tabasco, Mexico. I studied marine biology and specialized in marine mammals, but in the process, I rediscovered my passion for most kinds of animals (I am scared of some invertebrates and reptiles). More recently, I studied an AAS (Associate of Applied Science degree) in Geospatial Science to apply the knowledge on my research interest, which is understanding how natural and anthropogenic disturbances affect species.

In Niwot Ridge LTER, I will be testing and quantifying the performance of a Species Distribution Model for pika with empirically collected occupancy data from Niwot Ridge that I have been helping to sample since 2016 when I arrived as a volunteer. Also, I will be studying how microclimates influence pika's occupancy and survival. These projects will give us a better understanding of how human-aided climate change could affect not only this indicator species, the American pika, but how it will affect others that occupy the same environment.”

Welcome to NWT Airy!