Thilina D. Suransinghe

I am a wildlife ecologist with specialization in conservation biology and landscape ecology. I earned my PhD from Clemson University, with my research focus on the impacts of current and historical land uses on stream ecosystems. Understanding how human activities impact the environment and natural resources is crucial for sustainable development and biodiversity conservation. With this being the overarching goal, my recent research has focused on biotic homogenization along urban-rural gradients; landscape-scale conservation planning and reserve designing; local and landscape-scale predictors of community organization and species habitat associations; long-term biodiversity monitoring, particularly targeting post-restoration ecological responses in wetland and stream habitats; and biodiversity change across space and time. Geographic focus of my research includes numerous habitat types (forests, wetlands, streams) both in temperate and tropical biomes.
I am currently engaged in multiple collaborative research studies: wildlife occupancy along urban-to-rural gradients in southeastern Massachusetts (Urban Wildlife Information Network); biodiversity conservation outside protected area network in Sri Lanka (Nature Exploration and Education Team Sri Lanka); long-term change in community structure and composition of herpetofauna in southeastern Massachusetts (Mass Audubon); restoration of retired cranberry bogs into wetlands with respect to changes in the amphibian and reptile community structure and composition (spatial and temporal turnover in taxonomic and functional diversity) in collaboration with the Living Observatory and Massachusetts Division of Ecological Restoration; and assessing effectiveness of Sri Lankan protected area network for conservation of threatened vertebrates.   
Research website:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thilina-Surasinghe-2
Google scholar profile:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=dqBWhhgAAAAJ