I am Professor and Cooperative Extension Specialist in the Environmental Science, Policy and Management department and affiliated Professor of Geography at UC Berkeley. I study the drivers, patterns and consequences of environmental change across California’s spatially complex, socially diverse and dynamic landscapes using integrated geospatial tools. My work using GIS, remote sensing, historical data archives, web infrastructure, and participatory technologies enables interdisciplinary collaboration, data-rich and analysis-intensive geospatial research, and active outreach across a number of academic domains with significant societal impact.
The systems I focus on vary in type and scale, and include Sierra Nevada forests, San Francisco Bay wetlands, the California delta, and urban neighborhoods; but all of them are managed landscapes with a complex spatial structure that can be mapped using geospatial tools, and all of them have an interested group of stakeholders for whom the research results have importance.
My work using GIS, remote sensing, web infrastructure, and participatory technologies enables interdisciplinary collaboration, data-rich and analysis-intensive geospatial research, and active outreach across a number of academic domains with significant societal impact. I provide spatial inputs to models, scale biophysical processes from plot to landscape, estimate uncertainty, and visualize future scenarios from complex data sources. These technologies also play an important role as integrator in terms of science engagement: providing entry-points to community discussions about contentious issues, facilitating new avenues for broad data collection and multi-party knowledge, and providing common frameworks for visualization of landscape processes and management outcomes. I have published over 100 papers, chapters and reports in a range of ecological and geospatial journals.
