Prof. Avi Bar-Massada
Associate Professor
I am a spatial and landscape ecologist who studies how species interactions and the relationships between species and the environment shape ecological communities. In addition, I study how human activities affect these and other ecological processes, specifically in the case of human settlement in or near natural ecosystems (the wildland urban interface), and as the outcomes of grazing and fire. My research is based on computer models, advanced statistical analyses of large spatial databases, and spatial analyses using geographic information systems and remote sensing tools.
Academic Background
B.Sc. Environmental Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
M.Sc. Soil, Water, and Environmental Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
Ph.D. Soil, Water, and Environmental Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
Selected publications
Schug, F., Bar-Massada, A., Carlson, A.R. et al. (2023) The global wildland–urban interface. Nature 621, 94–99. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06320-0. [link]
Bar-Massada, A., Alcasena, F., Schug, F., Radeloff, V.C. (2023) The Wildland – Urban Interface in Europe: spatial patterns and associations with socioeconomic and demographic variables. Landscape and Urban Planning 235:7459. [link]
Gavish, Y., Wood, E.M., Martinuzzi, S., Pidgeon, A.M., Bar-Massada, A. (2021) Effects of bird species-level environmental preference on landscape-level richness-heterogeneity relationships. Basic and Applied Ecology 56: 1-13. [link]
Bar-Massada, A., Ives, A.R., Butsic, V. (2019) A mathematical partitioning of the effects of habitat loss and habitat degradation on species abundance. Landscape Ecology, 34:9-15. [link]
Bar-Massada, A., Belmaker, J. (2017) Non-stationarity in the co-occurrence patterns of species across environmental gradients. Journal of Ecology 105:391-399. [link]
Bar-Massada, A. (2015) Complex relationships between species niches and environmental heterogeneity affect species co-occurrence patterns in modelled and real communities. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 282:20150927. [link]
Bar-Massada, A., Wood, E. (2014) The richness – heterogeneity relationship differs between heterogeneity measures within and among habitats. Ecography 37:528-535. [link]
Teaching
Biostatistics, Landscape Ecology, Introduction to GIS, Introduction to Remote Sensing, Data processing in R