I’m a remote sensing scientist specializing in biodiversity and ecosystem monitoring. I earned my Ph.D. in Environmental Systems from the University of California, Merced, where I conducted research in the Earth Observation and Remote Sensing (EORS) Lab. My work sits at the intersection of remote sensing, ecology, and open data science, with a focus on developing scalable approaches for understanding and monitoring biodiversity across dynamic ecosystems.
My research leverages multi-scale remote sensing — from satellites, drones, and aircraft — combined with in-situ biodiversity surveys and environmental DNA (eDNA) from soils, sediments, and water. Together, these datasets help me assess, monitor, and model biodiversity across dynamic terrestrial–aquatic interfaces. I am especially interested in how hydrology and geomorphology shape biodiversity and ecosystem services, focusing on floodplains, river corridors, and ephemeral wetlands — the transitional zones where life and water converge.
A growing research area involves spatiotemporal data fusion, particularly for combining satellite and UAV imagery to generate synthetic fine-resolution time series. These approaches have applications in precision agriculture, environmental monitoring, and other domains where high spatial and temporal resolution are essential.
I’m a strong advocate for open-source geospatial science, reproducible workflows, and transparent methods. Much of my work centers on building modular tools for QGIS, Python, and R — including OpenRES, an open-source QGIS plugin for automated hydrogeomorphic feature extraction.
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