Raoul Boughton, Ph.D  

  Research Affiliate

The overarching research goal is to utilize Buck Island Ranch as a real-world laboratory to quantify the biodiversity and ecosystem services provided by working ranches. Our work provides the fundamental understanding of how we can maintain and improve ecosystem services, minimize tradeoffs, all while sustaining an economically productive agroecosystem. My research program is focused on: 1) the quantification of multiple ecosystem services provided by working ranches, 2) understanding how ranch management practices affects multiple ecosystem services and disservices, and 3) the drivers and threats to ecosystem services, such as invasive species and climate change. The overarching goal of our work is to discover innovative science-based solutions for sustainable agriculture that is profitable, delivers multiple ecosystem services to society, and reduces negative environmental impacts.

I am actively engaged in multiple national and global science networks including the USDA Long-term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network, Nutrient Network (nutnet), Disturbance, Resource Addition, and Recovery (Dragnet), Phenocam Network, Grazing Exclosure Consortium, and Community Responses to Resource Experiments (CORRE https://corredata.weebly.com/). These networks have allowed the Agroecology program to scale up the place-based research and provide data from subtropical grasslands to large national and global scale network analyses.

Broadly, my research program is focused on environmental and economic sustainability of ranches in the headwaters of the Everglades and is underpinned by basic and applied research in Ecosystem services, Ecology, Biogeochemistry, and Hydrology. 

Elizabeth “Betsey” Boughton, Ph.D.

Director of Agroecology, Senior Research Biologist 

Feral pigs are a rampant invasive species throughout Florida. Archbold collaborates with an interdisciplinary group studying the habits of feral pigs via a network of remote cameras, GPS collar data, gene sequencing technology, and monitoring for potential disease. The image data we collect remote cameras has already lead to advances in the usefulness of machine learning technology in wildlife ecology. 

Camera trap image data, machine learning in wildlife ecology, spatial capture-recapture, animal movement data, continuous time movement modeling

Data and Analysis Types

Buck Island Ranch, Headwaters of the Everglades Watershed, Florida Wildlife Corridor

Primary Location(s)

Years Active

Project Details

Rooting from feral swine shifted a bunchgrass dominated wet prairie to a near monoculture of  redroot

Monitoring feral swine movements with GPS collars demonstrates preference for traveling on roads, even in open, pasture-dominant landscapes.

Plant community shifts caused by feral swine rooting devalue Florida rangeland. 

Feral Swine Ecology & Management

Major Findings & Impact

Project Details

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