I study impacts of land use and climate change on forest ecosystems at both local and global scales. By combining remote sensing, spatial analysis, and cloud computing, I help identify where and to what extent forests can deliver nature-based solutions to the climate crisis.
My work has helped inform federal policy to restore protections against logging and road-building to more than 9 million acres of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest. It has also highlighted the important climate benefits that Indigenous peoples and community-held lands in the Amazon provide through their sustainable stewardship of forests.
In other work, I contributed to a first-of-its-kind globally consistent spatial dataset (~500m resolution) of the unrealized potential carbon stored in above- and below-ground forest biomass and soils, and helped to create a useable framework for prioritizing on-the-ground actions related to the restoration, improved management, and maintenance of carbon stocks in these ecosystems. Through my work, I aim to advance our understanding of the crucial role that forests—and the people that protect, manage, and restore forests—can play in combating climate change.
I have a B.S. in physical geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a M.S. in geography and a certificate in geographic information systems from the University of Idaho, where my thesis focused on remote sensing of climate-related forest disturbance in open-canopy woodlands
