Former Students, Staff and Visitors

Graduate Students

Kristin Byrd

Ph.D. Graduate Student 2000-2005. Graduated, Spring 2005. Restoration ecology, tidal wetlands, remote sensing, GIS - UC Marine Council Graduate Research Fellowship recipient, and recipient of the annual Conservation Research Award jointly sponsored by the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Award and the Elkhorn Slough Foundation. Graduated Spring 2005. Dissertation Title: "Temporal and spatial linkages between watershed land use and wetland vegetation response in the Elkhorn Slough watershed, Monterey County, CA." She is currently Physical Scientist at the USGS Western Geographic Science Center.

Tim De Chant

Ph.D. Graduate Student 2004-2009. Graduated Spring 2009. Ecology, landscape ecology, science journalism. Dissertation title: "Merging tree physiology and landscape ecology: examining the effects of urbanization on California’s oak woodlands."

Qinghua Guo

Ph.D. Graduate Student from 2001-2005. Graduated Summer 2005 (co-chaired with John Battles). Landscape ecology, quantitative ecology, remote sensing, GIS. Currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering at UC Merced. Dissertation Title: "Development of Geospatial Techniques for Ecological Analysis -- a Case Study of Sudden Oak Death in California."

Desheng Liu

Ph.D. Graduate Student from 2001-2006. Graduated Summer 2006 (co-chaired with Peng Gong). Remote Sensing, Spatial Statistics, Sudden Oak Death. Desheng is an Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University (in Geography and Statistics) in the Fall of 2006. Dissertation Title: "Spatio-temporal Mapping and Modeling of A New Forest Disease Spread Using Remote Sensing and Spatial Statistics."

Karin Tuxen

Ph.D. student. Graduated Spring 2007. Wetland restoration, Landscape ecology, Remote sensing. Dissertation Title: "Multi-scale functional mapping of tidal marsh vegetation for restoration monitoring."

Matt Wacker

M.A. Graduate Student 2000-2002. Graduated Fall 2002. Landcover change, GIS, vernal pools. Currently Easement Steward at MALT. Thesis Title: "Land use vegetation change on El Dorado County, CA rangelands: implications for rangeland conservation."

Undergraduates

John Dingman

Forestry Honors Project 2006-2007. Worked on a SPUR project with the VTM data.

Susan Nawbury

Worked with Tim DeChant and me on "Oaks on the Edge: Ecophysiological Analysis of Coast Live Oaks in the Wildland-Urban Interface." This project seeks to understand the impact of urban development on the physiology of coast live oak trees in California. Susan is in charge of measuring and analyzing the ring widths of the prepared coast live oak cores and correlating the changes in ring width with detailed development histories and weather data from the past 50 years.

Andrea Kristof

was working with Lisa Schile and me on "Isotopic characterization of San Francisco Bay tidal wetland vegetation, invertebrates and fish." This project examines changes to sea level and salinity regimes due to climate change that will likely have an impact on the SF Bay estuary. Andrea will be involved with the field sampling in estuarine marshes. The researcher will also process samples of vegetation, invertebrates, and fish.

Daniel Song

was working with the GIF and me on "The Living Campus: Mapping UC Berkeley's Ornamental Trees." Daniel is helping us map the location and condidtion of the beautiful ornamental trees on campus using GPS and GIS.

Visitors

Ken-ichi Ueda

MS School for Information Managmement. Participatory webGIS. Projects included Vegetation Type Mapping and Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project.

Oscar Fernandez-Manso

Visitor, Summer 2007. PhD student from University of Leon-Ponferrada Campus. Forest engineering, remote sensing, OBIA.

Travis Freed

M.A. Graduate Student 2001-2004. Graduated Fall 2004 (co-chaired with Scott Stephens). GIS, remote sensing, fire ecology, fire modeling.

Faith Kearns

PhD student and Staff Research Associate 2001-04. Graduated Summer 2003. AAAS Currently Academic Coordinator for the CNR Center for Fire Research and Outreach and the Fire Information Engine.

Javier Lozano

Visitor, Fall 2005. Ph.D. student from University of Leon, Spain. Interested in Fire, fire ecology, landscape ecology and GIS/RS. Currently working with Demios in Spain.

Staff

Ellen Kersten

Ellen joined us from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health where she worked as a research associate for a study on the health effects of restaurant access in rural areas through 2009. She has also worked for the Greenlining Institute researching health and housing issues in California's Central Valley. Ellen graduated from UCLA in 2006 with a B.A. in Geography and Political Science and enjoys exploring the outdoors of the Bay Area and beyond. She developed our operational Our Space project, and she is moving to Rachel Morello-Frosch's lab at UCB.

Brent Pedersen

Part-time Programmer/Analyst. 2006. WebGIS programming. Worked on the OakMapper Project.

Casey Cleve

Part-time SRA (shared with the Fire Center), 2006-2007. Remote sensing/GIS/GPS. Projects included Wetlands and Greenhouse Gases in the Delt. Currently GIS manager at Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District.

Elsie Windes

Undergrad assistant.

Julian Metcalf

SRA II, 2006-2007. Remote sensing/GIS/GPS. Projects included Wetlands, Sudden Oak Death and Vegetation Type Mapping.

Mindy Syfert

SRA II. Remote sensing/GIS/GPS. Projects included Pierce Disease, Sudden Oak Death and Vegetation Type Mapping.

Lauren McGee

Intern. Undergraduate Integrative Biology major. Projects included Vegetation Type Mapping.

Eric Waller

SRA II. Now working with Max Moritz.

David Shaari

SRA II 2002-2005. Remote sensing/GIS/GPS. Projects included mapping Sudden Oak Death and Pierce's Disease, as well as beetle damage assessment. Currently GIS Manager for California State Parks Department.

Henna Chou

Intern Summer 2002. Sudden Oak Death. Returned to undergraduate research at Iowa State University.

Wanxiao Sun

Post Doctoral Researcher Fall 2001. Sudden Oak Death. Currently Assistant Professor in the Geography Department in Southern Illinois University.