BioSCape Data Skills Workshop 2024

Research scientist at NASA Goddard. Trained in remote sensing and vegetation modeling. Open source evangelist, (Neo)Vim enthusiast, useR.

Researching African ecosystem dynamics, with a particular interest in ecotones and fire. Currently the Science Team Manager for NASA's first biodiversity-focussed field campaign - BioSCape. Working at the University at Buffalo in the lab of Adam Wilson, as well as with Erin Hestir (University of California, Merced) and Jasper Slingsby (University of Cape Town).

Dr. Erin Hestir is an assistant professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering and a faculty member in the Environmental Systems Graduate Group. Her research focuses on land and water systems under threat from competing pressures to meet societal needs for water and food security while sustaining biodiversity and other ecosystem services such as water quality. She has expertise in geospatial analytics, hyperspectral and satellite remote sensing and sensor networks for inland and coastal waters and wetlands. Dr. Hestir also has expertise in the application of remote sensing for water resources and ecosystem management, and in facilitating the adoption of remote sensing for environmental reporting.

Scientific software engineer at NASA Goddard and Science Systems and Applications Inc.

My name is Glenn Moncrieff and I am a Geospatial Data Scientist and ML Engineer based in Cape Town, South Africa. My background is in geography and ecology, and nowadays I spend most of my time observing the earth with satellites and machine learning. I train models and conduct research to analyse environmental data. Most of my effort is focussed on addressing the biodiversity and climate crises. I am most comfortable coding in Python and R.

Henry Frye is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Forest and Wildlife Ecology. His primary research interest is understanding how spectroscopy can be used to observe plant chemistry, structure, and diversity across a variety of ecosystems. He also is broadly interested in quantitative ecology and biogeography.

My research is predominantly focused on global change in South African terrestrial ecosystems and revolves around field studies and spatial data analyses with the goal of informing policy and management. Most of my projects focus on fire, water, land cover (including invasive species) and climate change.

Dr. Kerry Cawse-Nicholson is an expert in spectroscopic imagery, particularly in fusing datasets acquired over different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum and in quantifying uncertainty. Kerry works as part of several mission teams, as the Science Lead for ECOSTRESS, a thermal radiometer mounted on the International Space Station, and the Deputy Project Scientist for the thermal portion of an upcoming NASA mission designated to study the Earth's Surface Biology and Geology (SBG). Kerry studies land surface temperature, wildfires, evapotranspiration, and biodiversity, and produces a number of publicly available data products.

Dr. Kyle Kovach is an expert on utilizing drone and in situ hyperspectral remote sensing for the estimation of structural and biochemical traits in forest ecosystems. In fact, he has designed and built multiple drones and aerial sensors for forest applications in the lab.

I'm an ecologist and geospatial professional currently working at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC); part of NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System and the ORNL Biological and Environmental Systems Science Directorate. I really enjoy working with the NASA and ORNL Science Community to both provide data that are useful in their applications and to help with the long term curation of terrestrial ecology datasets. Developing data science tutorials and conducting webinars and workshops also provides me with a way to be instructive to our user community.

Dr. Philip Townsend is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin and a Co-Director of ASCEND. His research focuses include physiological remote sensing, imaging spectroscopy, ecosystem ecology, and watershed hydrology.

I am a research staff member at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), working at NASA's Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC). I have an extensive background in remote sensing applied to vegetation measurements, cyber-infrastructure development, and data science. I have led the development of several tools, algorithms, and data services that enable the estimation of earth science observables from satellite, airborne, and ground-based remote sensing.