Karen is an environmental scientist with an interest in all things spatial. Her work queries the relationships between patterns and functions in ecosystems. She predominantly works in systems with small plants where the structure of ecosystems relates to functional ways that landscapes respond to change. She founded the University of Exeter’s DroneLab where her team are trying out new ways of using drones for capturing environmental data. Karen works at the University of Exeter as an Associate Professor in the geography department, and she joined FoAM Kernow (now called Then Try This) as a non-executive director in October 2020.