Paul Galpern

Postdoctoral research associate, Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba
Landscape ecology, spatial genetics, and environmental management in boreal systems

I work on questions in ecological modelling and spatial analysis and their applications to environmental management and conservation; in particular, how the spatial structure of landscapes may influence the movement of organisms, and how spatial genetic data can inform decisions.

Applications of this work include making sure wildlife can move freely to access habitat they require, and preventing the spread of pests, pathogens and invasive species.

Currently, I am a postdoctoral research associate supervised by Dr. Micheline Manseau (University of Manitoba and Parks Canada) and Dr. Paul Wilson (Trent University). Before starting a PhD, I had another career as a secondary school teacher.

Peer-reviewed publications
  • 7.  Galpern, P., and M. Manseau.  2013. Finding the functional grain:  comparing methods for scaling resistance surfaces. Landscape Ecology (doi: 10.1007/s10980-013-9873-1)
  • 6.  Galpern, P., and M. Manseau.  2013. Modelling the influence of landscape connectivity on animal distribution:  a functional grain approach. Ecography. (doi:10.1111/j.1600-0587.2012.00081.x)
  • 5.  Galpern, P., M. Manseau, P. J. Wilson.  2012.  Grains of connectivity:  analysis at multiple spatial scales in landscape genetics. Molecular Ecology 21:3996-4009.
  • 4.  Galpern, P., M. Manseau, P. Hettinga, K. Smith, P.J. Wilson.  2012. ALLELEMATCH: an R package for identifying unique multilocus genotypes where genotyping error and missing data may be present. Molecular Ecology Resources 12:771-778.
  • 3.  Galpern, P., M. Manseau, A. Fall. 2011.  Patch-based graphs of landscape connectivity: a guide to construction, analysis, and application for conservation. Biological Conservation 144:44-55.
  • 2.  Houle, D., J. Mezey, P. Galpern, and A. Carter. 2003. Automated measurement of Drosophila wings. BMC Evolutionary Biology 3:25.
  • 1.  Houle, D., J. Mezey, and P. Galpern. 2002. Interpretation of the results of common principal component analyses. Evolution 56:433-440.
Books
  • 2. Galpern, P., C. Kirstein, L, Leesti, G. Reither. 2007. Learn Smart: Strategies to Succeed in School and Life. Teacher’s Resource. Emond Montgomery, Toronto.  (Publisher)
  • 1.  Pegis, J., M. Emond., P. Galpern, G. Hall, C. Kirstein, L, Leesti, G. Reither. 2007. Learn Smart: Strategies to Succeed in School and Life. Emond Montgomery, Toronto. (Publisher)
pgphoto

NOTEWORTHY

The Caribou Diversity Project

A web-based citizen science project to “crowdsource” the analysis of caribou photos is up and running.  We have a working prototype here.  Help us beta-test the site and the analysis.  All that is required is your innate human ability to assess the similarity of two objects.  It’s fun!

grainscape package for R

GRAINSCAPE software is now available for grains of connectivity and minimum planar graph analyses of landscape connectivity.  A detailed tutorial has now been written, and is available here.   The software appears in the Molecular Ecology paper (Galpern et al., 2012).  GRAINSCAPE is hosted at R-forge and thanks to Andrew Fall is distributed with SELES.  Instructions to download, install, as well as manuals and tutorials are available here.

allelematch package for R

We have released ALLELEMATCH, a new genetic analysis tool, implemented in R, for identifying unique multilocus genotypes in non-invasive sampling protocols.  It is available for download from CRAN.  A paper describing it is now published in Molecular Ecology Resources.  Additional information and tutorials are available here.

R for Landscape Ecology Workshop Series

I am offering a series of three workshops in using R for a landscape ecology course at the University of Manitoba.  The workshops begin by introducing the basics of R and proceed to developing skill in the sp and raster packages.  Together these can provide an R alternative to the Spatial Analyst extension in ArcGIS.  Materials for the R for Landscape Ecology Workshop Series can be downloaded here.

BorealScape is the website of Paul Galpern at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
pgalpern at gmail dot com