CYBIL NICOLE CAVALIERI “NIKKI”

Nikki is currently an ORISE Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the USGS Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, working on climate change refugia (CCR) in Tanzania.

With her research, Nikki aims to provide information for agencies and communities in Tanzania to be able to make decisions on how and where to prioritize resources for conservation.

Pathway to CCR 

Nikki’s journey into studying CCR began with her PhD dissertation, where she identified geographic patterns in the size and shape of spotted hyena and striped hyena skulls and determining if historic bioclimatic and social variables explain observed patterns. From already having a background conducting geospatial statistics in Africa, Nikki views her current work in Tanzania as an extension of her prior research: she now looks to the future of climate change and its impacts on regions of habitat suitability for the wildlife of Tanzania. 

Conducting CCR Research - Fieldwork and Statistics

Nikki’s current research began with a request from USAID to do climate change work in Tanzania. Although her work consists mostly of statistics and digital time, Nikki first visited Tanzania in October 2022 to perform fieldwork. During this visit, Nikki and her colleagues met and worked with many Tanzanian government agencies, NGOs, and local people. Agencies, such as the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) and the Tanzania National Parks Authority (TANAPA), were concerned about impacts on tourism, trade, and spoke about more ecological monitoring. Officials of the Forest Service asked about future timber harvest and the impacts on trees. Groups like the Jane Goodall Institute were interested in wildlife monitoring. NGOs based in Europe and North America, such as BirdLife International, were interested in the avian species that migrated from those regions to spend winter in Tanzania. Local people, across age groups and regions of the country, revealed their concerns that they are observing the impacts of climate change, with more drought events and rain cycles becoming unpredictable, but not having the resources necessary to plan and enact management strategies. From all of these discussions, Nikki’s research steps in with CCR mapping and connectivity analyses between the suitable habitats. 

Unforeseen Challenges

Nikki describes limited data availability due to resources being prioritized to other pressing  conservation efforts (such as poaching). The data for this project has come from museum records and surveys conducted prior of large mammals and bird species – species more easy to detect than small animals. However, in trying to work with this data, the team ran into an unforeseen issue of needing to acquire permits, extending the time of the project. So during the Christmas season in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Nikki toiled away, submitting permits to Tanzania. 

Memorable Experiences

For a researcher primarily doing work on her computers, Nikki describes her most memorable experiences in Tanzania: meetings with government agencies and traveling through the country. She recalls the importance and complication of the meetings with various agencies who manage different aspects of Tanzanian conservation and the challenges with trying to be on the same page. Her favorite part, however, was traveling with members of the Jane Goodall Institute and meeting local people. She elaborates on seeing hyenas, which she’d studied for her dissertation and had led her to CCR research, creating a full-circle moment. 

Advice for Future Researchers

Nikki advises to build two strong skill sets when studying CCR: interpersonal communication and quantitative skills beyond parametric statistics. Building relationships and having co-production knowledge is vital to working successfully in a large team – which is often the case for projects like these, where many scientists are involved. Although relevant quantitative skills are constantly changing, Nikki highlights the importance of developing the following understandings: the questions to ask, the statistics needed to answer those questions, and the assumptions that need to be fulfilled for the statistics. This process helps researchers make the right quantitative decisions from their data and results.