Simon Geikie

Director

Simon is Director of Landscape Observatory, he leads the Defra-supported project working across England’s Protected Landscapes to fundamentally change how landscapes are understood, monitored and managed in response to a rapidly warming world.

Background

With a background in ecology, Simon has more than 30 years’ experience in conservation, management planning and adaptive management. He was previously Strategy Team Manager at the Peak District National Park Authority, where he led the work on climate change, management planning and the application of adaptive management approaches.

Together with David Alexander, Simon developed the innovative work that became the foundation for Landscape Observatory, initially developing and testing the approach within the Peak District National Park. Their work brought together high-resolution landscape data, emerging digital and AI technologies and new approaches to landscape scale decision making. This work subsequently developed into the Landscape Observatory project which now works across all England’s Protected Landscapes covering circa 25% of land cover.

Simon is focused on helping Protected Landscapes move beyond traditional approaches to conservation and develop more forward looking, climate smart approaches to landscape management. Through Landscape Observatory, he is leading the work to bring together scientific evidence, local knowledge, digital technologies and the Resist, Accept, Direct (RAD) framework to support better decision-making at landscape scale.

Publications

Van der Plas, T.L., Geikie, S.T., Alexander, D.G. and Simms, D.M., 2023. Multi-stage semantic segmentation quantifies fragmentation of small habitats at a landscape scale. Remote Sensing, 15 (22), p.5277.