Hi, my name is Coco Chen and I am currently enrolled in the BCS program at UBC. Prior to this, I obtained my Bachelor’s degree in forestry resource management from UBC Forestry, and then furthered my studies at the University of Queensland, Australia. My graduate project was on the impact of land-use change on riparian ecological functions. The first step was to integrate a global case study from a few days ago to develop an ecological function-based approach to riparian zone delineation and to establish an evaluation system for basic riparian ecological functions. After that, 10 most representative rivers were selected as samples around the world, and Google Earth Engine was used as the main platform to classify the riparian zones. Land use types were determined within this zone and the resulting ecological function evaluation system was applied. A correlation model between land use type changes and riparian ecological functions was established and the trend of land use changes on riparian ecosystems over the past 20 years was understood.

During the research process, I realized several times the profound impact of big data and machine learning on the development of ecological models, and decided to study computer fundamentals. I hope to further explore the study of ecosystem functional changes at the global scale through the analysis of large sample sizes provided by big data platforms. I also hope to learn some basic machine learning knowledge, so that I can collaborate with other software engineers to improve the current ecological modeling software, which is too incompatible and has too many errors when used in different locations. I hope I can continue to work on ecological modeling in the future and make some small contributions to the conservation of the earth.