Contact Dr Alice Johnston
Areas of expertise
- Agrifood Systems
- Carbon, Climate and Risk
- Computing, Simulation & Modelling
- Monitoring and Environmental Informatics
- Soil
- Soil Resources
Background
Alice is an ecologist and modeller, with interests in biodiversity and ecosystem process responses to environmental change. Her research spans from predicting how invertebrates respond to multiple stressors such as plant protection products and habitat fragmentation to understanding how ecosystems regulate greenhouse gas emissions and temperature on a global scale. Alice completed a BSc (Hons) degree in Environmental Science at Newcastle University, followed by a PhD at University of Reading. Between her PhD and lecturer post at Cranfield, Alice consulted for industry as an ecological modeller and was awarded a NERC Independent Research Fellowship.
Current activities
Dr Alice Johnston's research focuses on gaining a mechanistic understanding of how organisms interact with their environment to determine population-, community- and ecosystem-level responses to environmental change. These mechanisms can be represented using different modelling approaches relevant to the spatio-temporal scales in question. At the field scale, for instance, Individual-based models (IBMs) allow for interactions between individual animals and spatially explicit environmental variables (e.g. temperature, food availability) and stressors (e.g. tillage, pesticides) to drive population responses. Alice is particularly interested in the development of a standardised mechanistic population modelling approach, in which representation of individual-level mechanisms (physiology, behaviour and evolution) are extensively tested across species and scenarios, to improve forecasts of animal responses to environmental change in the uncertain future. At the community and ecosystem level, Alice is interested in testing central ecological principles using large datasets to explore the links between soil communities and ecosystem functions (e.g. carbon cycling), and the ability of ecological theories to describe complex phenomena such as the temperature sensitivity of ecosystem respiration.
Publications
Articles In Journals
- Kim J, Khouakhi A, Corstanje R & Johnston ASA. (2024). Greater local cooling effects of trees across globally distributed urban green spaces. Science of The Total Environment, 911
- Rust W, Sotkewicz M, Li Z, Mercer T & Johnston AS. (2024). Soil–Plant–Pollinator Relationships in Urban Grass and Meadow Habitats: Competing Benefits and Demands of Tall Flowering Plants on Soil and Pollinator Diversity. Diversity, 16(6)
- Johnston ASA. (2024). Predicting emergent animal biodiversity patterns across multiple scales. Global Change Biology, 30(7)
- Johnston ASA, Meade A, Ardö J, Arriga N, Black A, .... (2021). Temperature thresholds of ecosystem respiration at a global scale. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 5(4)
- Forbes VE, Agatz A, Ashauer R, Butt KR, Capowiez Y, .... (2021). Mechanistic Effect Modeling of Earthworms in the Context of Pesticide Risk Assessment: Synthesis of the FORESEE Workshop. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, 17(2)
- Grimm V, Johnston ASA, Thulke H-H, Forbes VE & Thorbek P. (2020). Three questions to ask before using model outputs for decision support. Nature Communications, 11(1)
- Mintram KS, Maynard SK, Brown AR, Boyd R, Johnston ASA, .... (2020). Applying a mechanistic model to predict interacting effects of chemical exposure and food availability on fish populations. Aquatic Toxicology, 224
- Johnston ASA & Sibly RM. (2020). Multiple environmental controls explain global patterns in soil animal communities. Oecologia, 192(4)
- Johnston ASA, Boyd RJ, Watson JW, Paul A, Evans LC, .... (2019). Predicting population responses to environmental change from individual-level mechanisms: towards a standardized mechanistic approach. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 286(1913)
- Johnston ASA. (2019). Land management modulates the environmental controls on global earthworm communities. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 28(12)
- Johnston ASA & Sibly RM. (2018). The influence of soil communities on the temperature sensitivity of soil respiration. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2(10)
- Johnston ASA, Sibly RM & Thorbek P. (2018). Forecasting tillage and soil warming effects on earthworm populations. Journal of Applied Ecology, 55(3)
- Reed M, Alvarez T, Chelinho S, Forbes V, Johnston A, .... (2016). A risk assessment example for soil invertebrates using spatially explicit agent‐based models. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, 12(1)
- van der Vaart E, Johnston ASA & Sibly RM. (2016). Predicting how many animals will be where: How to build, calibrate and evaluate individual-based models. Ecological Modelling, 326
- Johnston ASA, Sibly RM, Hodson ME, Alvarez T & Thorbek P. (2015). Effects of agricultural management practices on earthworm populations and crop yield: validation and application of a mechanistic modelling approach. Journal of Applied Ecology, 52(5)
- van der Vaart E, Beaumont MA, Johnston ASA & Sibly RM. (2015). Calibration and evaluation of individual-based models using Approximate Bayesian Computation. Ecological Modelling, 312
- Johnston ASA, Holmstrup M, Hodson ME, Thorbek P, Alvarez T, .... (2014). Earthworm distribution and abundance predicted by a process-based model. Applied Soil Ecology, 84
- Johnston ASA, Hodson ME, Thorbek P, Alvarez T & Sibly RM. (2014). An energy budget agent-based model of earthworm populations and its application to study the effects of pesticides. Ecological Modelling, 280
- Grimm V, Augusiak J, Focks A, Frank BM, Gabsi F, .... (2014). Towards better modelling and decision support: Documenting model development, testing, and analysis using TRACE. Ecological Modelling, 280
- Sibly RM, Grimm V, Martin BT, Johnston ASA, Kułakowska K, .... (2013). Representing the acquisition and use of energy by individuals in agent‐based models of animal populations. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 4(2)
- Grimm V, Railsback SF, Vincenot CE, Berger U, Gallagher C, .... The ODD Protocol for Describing Agent-Based and Other Simulation Models: A Second Update to Improve Clarity, Replication, and Structural Realism. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 23(2)
