Dr Laurence De Clippele is a Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. She is a marine ecologist who studies deep-sea benthic habitats such as cold-water coral reefs and sponge grounds but also studies shallow temperate and tropical coastal habitats. She is an expert in using machine learning methods to understand how biodiversity is changing in time and space. She mostly uses image and passive acoustic monitoring data in combination with bathymetric, current speed and other environmental data.

She did her PhD on the fine-scale distribution of cold-water corals in the North-East Atlantic Ocean, through which she developed new methods to understand and predict their distribution. She then worked as part of two Horizon 2020 trans-Atlantic multidisciplinary research programmes for which she developed an award-winning method to map underwater biomass. She also developed a new arcPro GIS tool to semi-automatically map and characterise cold-water coral mounds, which she used to understand their growth over geological time scales.

She joined the University of Glasgow in 2023. The aim of her current research is to combine knowledge and approaches from the fields of marine ecology, acoustics and computer vision to develop new tools and methods that contribute to extracting ecologically relevant information from big datasets quickly and robustly. The overarching aim of her research is to significantly increase our understanding of the biodiversity associated with marine benthic habitats in relation to natural, climate and human-driven changes, which will provide meaningful insights and actionable outcomes in relation to the conservation and effective management of our oceans to ensure sustainable Blue Growth development.

Current research projects: 

• Passive Acoustic Monitoring as a tool for offshore wind farm biodiversity assessments (Scottish Governement ScotMER Programme)
• Interactive machine learning for marine image analysis (COST action)
• Unlocking deep-sea biodiversity data from Greenland’s submarine wall ecosystems using a new AI image analysis tool (Arctic Bursary)
• Use of passive acoustics to quantify fish biodiversity and habitat use (DFO,  Competitive Research Fund)
• Healthy and unhealthy soundscapes in cold-water coral reefs (ASSEMBLE plus)

For more information visit Laurence De Clippele's Website, Google Scholar,  ResearchGate, Linkedin

Laurence De Clippele is an expert in deep sea benthic habitats that can be found in the north and south Atlantic Ocean, but she also work in shallow habitats such as seagrass beds around Scotland's coasts.

Topics of research interest: 

marine ecology; biodiversity; spatiotemporal patterns; conservation; marine spatial planning; climate change; pollution; machine learning; predictive modelling; image analysis; passive acoustics; deep-sea habitats; coastal ecosystems; science communication

Research groups

• Ecology & Environmental Change
• Machine Learning

List by: Type | Date

Prior publications

Grants and Awards listed are those received whilst working with the University of Glasgow.

• Passive acoustic monitoring as a tool for offshore wind farm biodiversity assessments: A pilot study
  Scottish Government
  2023 - 2025
   

PhD projects

The role of sponge competition in cold-water coral reefs – ROV video analyses and secondary metabolite profiling in the search for compounds of medical and ecological relevance

PhD student: Poppy Clark

Supervisors: Marcel Jaspars (University of Aberdeen) & Laurence De Clippele (University of Glasgow)

High resolution CWC reef scale 3D habitat mapping - insights on spatial and temporal variability

PhD student: Corie Boolukos

Supervisors: Aaron Lim (University College Cork), Laurence De Clippele (University of Glasgow), Paul Holloway (University College Cork)

• Ardila Villamizar, Laura Melissa
  Urban biodiversity in the neotropics: Understanding the ecological factors that affect avian diversity within Colombian cities

Life Sciences Level 3:  Aquatic Biology/ Marine & Freshwater Biology 

• Marine Ecology Fieldcourse
• Environmental Impact Assessment
• Applications and careers week
• Mini - projects

Life Sciences Level 4:  Tropical Marine Biology 

• Lectures & Egypt field course

Prizes, awards & distinctions

• 2019: Best Early Career Researcher Presentation prize at the 7th International Symposium on Deep-Sea Corals, Cartagena (Deep Sea Biology Society)
• 2015: Heriot-Watt principle’s public engagement award (Heriot-Watt University)

Professional & learned societies

• 2023 - 2023: Global Assessor, Red List, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

Selected international presentations

• 2023: Key Note at Deep Sea Coral Symposium (Edinburgh (UK))
• 2023: Workshop at MASTS (Glasgow (UK))
• 2023: Oral Presentation at Marine Biology Symposium (Reykjavík (Iceland))
• 2023: Workshop at Marine Animal Forest COST Action Training School (Faro (Portugal))
• 2023: Oral presentation at deep-sea vulnerable marine ecosystems dynamics workshop (Online (The Netherlands))
• 2023: Oral presentation at Values at Sea conference (Exeter (UK))