Natural resources are essential to humanity. With the increase in global development in recent decades, people must monitor the state of the environment, whose disturbance has a more significant impact on society than before. However, conventional environmental monitoring is challenged in highly dynamic ecosystems and large areas. As a solution,...
The objective of this dissertation is to enhance the monitoring of forest ecosystems through the utilization of remotely sensed data to address the exigencies posed by the Anthropocene. On a global scale, rising temperatures and fluctuating precipitation patterns have strained forests and produced shifts in natural disturbance regimes. Additionally, the...
We live on an Urban Planet. The current unprecedented urbanization is accompanied by intensive land cover transition and demographic shifts from rural to urban livelihoods. Cities serve as cultural, economic, political centers that facilitate wealth creation and innovation of the society, sustaining human from multi-dimensions with large ecological footprints far...
The global cryosphere, defined as the world’s ice and snow covered regions, is a crucial water source for society and ecosystem functions, as well as an important regulator of the earth’s energy budget. Melt from glaciers and seasonal snow cover provides water for more than a sixth of the world’s...
The natural environment provides important services and benefits to peoples’ health and lives. Conversely, environmental disservices can have negative impacts on humans such as through pollution, chemical toxins, and climate change. The combination of environmental services and disservices encompass how human health and wellbeing, and the environment are connected. As...
In the Colombian Amazon there has been a complex interplay of rebel groups’ control over land, drug trafficking, and absence of the Government of Colombia. Here, I use satellite remote sensing, ethnographic research and statistical models to provide insights into causal effect and causal mechanisms of land change and economic...
Interest in mapping bathymetry from multispectral satellite imagery has grown steadily since the 1970s. Notwithstanding the significant advancements made during this time, one limitation is that the group of algorithms collectively referred to as Satellite Derived Bathymetry (SDB) generally require “seed depths,” hindering their use for areas lacking reliable reference...
Imagery acquired from unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and processed with structure from motion (SfM) – multi-view stereo (MVS) algorithms provides transformative new capabilities for surveying and mapping. Together, these new tools are leading to a democratization of airborne surveying and mapping by enabling similar capabilities (including similar or better accuracies,...
Changes to disturbance regimes resulting from shifts in forest management practices have created novel landscape conditions in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). I analyzed the implications of changes to landscape conditions caused by forest management for the spread of a native root disease: black stain root disease (BSRD) of Douglas-fir. BSRD...
The frontlines of climate change adaptation will occur in rural, impoverished regions of the world where households engage in climatically dependent livelihoods, such as peasant agriculture or pastoralism. As changing climate and changing markets affect the suite of household livelihood assets (environmental, social, and economic) which enable a household to...