Environment
This is the page description.
— Environmental Management —
Every ecosystem is unique. Each project requires a creative selection of remote sensing and analytic methods to inform effective strategy, create reliable monitoring, and accurately evaluate interventions. These projects showcase a diverse collection of technological applications I developed to better understand ecosystem dynamics and temporal changes in biomass composition and health. These projects range from identifying and quantifying invasive species in new preserves to coordinating citizen science remote sensing efforts to understanding the drivers of toxic algae growth in coastal nursery habitats.
Invasive Species Eradication Project
— spring 2019-spring 2020 —
In the spring of 2019 I began working with The Nature Conservancy’s to inform their invasive species eradication strategic plan. I completed habitat and species composition analysis at 20 sites across the preserve using a combination of drone imagery and LiDAR collected by Kelly Easterday and her team. The results will help inform the success of their invasive species eradication initiative and act as a baseline for future progress and evaluation. While the current vegetation maps are incredibly detailed by the standards of ecological restoration projects, my goal was to take the resolution level down to individual species clusters. The images to the right show a resolution comparison between outputs created by my machine learning image segmentation process (A & B) and maps produced from traditional transect surveys (C & D).
— Partners —
The Nature Conservancy
Algae Identification and Delineation
— summer 2019 & 2020 —
To help inform Dr. Mary Power and other researchers working at Angelo Coast Range Reserve I completed algae identification, quantification, and analysis at 3 sites across the reserve. I worked to analyze drone imagery captured by myself and two colleagues over two periods over the summer of 2019 and 2020. The range of dates provide insight into the rate of conversion from Epithemia to Phormidium. The results will help inform research on positive and negative impacts of algae to the health species sharing of river watershed habitat. The images below show the three sites we worked at along the river.
— Partners —
University of California Research Reserve System, UC Berkeley
Algae Eutrophication Mitigation
— fall 2019 —
Site managers at the Elkhorn Slough National Research Reserve wanted to understand the fluctuations in algae cover in one of the nursery habitats of the preserve. They had captured drone data of the site monthly for nearly seven years and wanted to understand what factors were driving excess growth. I worked with computer vision and decorrelation techniques to automate the identification and quantification of total cover. We’re now expanding this project to encompass more data and provide data to support their active mitigation strategy.
— Partners —
National Estuarine Research Reserve System, Elkhorn Slough Foundation
Vegetation Bridges Research Project
— spring 2019 —
In the spring of 2019 I captured data with researchers from the University of California to understand how connective biomass effects plant community and insect populations in urban farms. For this project I quantified the total biomass cover removed and added in the designated areas of each urban farm.
— Partners —
University of California, Santa Cruz
Coastal Collaborative Conservation Project
— spring 2017 —
We tapped into the local community of drone users to collect aerial imagery that was used to create high resolution maps, models, and conservation materials for the marsh. This also allowed us to establish a citizen science infrastructure to sustain continued data collection in support of the project. This was one of the first times a project accomplished citizen science based biological monitoring for land management with an outlook of understanding climate change effects will impact the marsh plant community and topography structure, allowing managers to make informed mitigation efforts.
— Partners —
San Dieguito River Park Marsh, US State Dept.
