Research Staff
| Eric A. Davidson, Ph.D. President and Senior Scientist |
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Dr. Davidson is an ecologist, soil scientist, and biogeochemist interested in the role of soil microorganisms as processors of carbon and nitrogen. He has studied the exchange of carbon and nitrogen gases, including heat-trapping greenhouse gases, between the soil and the atmosphere. His research addresses how human management of the land affects greenhouse gases production and consumption within soils and losses of nutrients to streams and groundwater. Dr. Davidson is also interested in the interface of science, policy, and education, and has published on ecological economics and human alteration of the nitrogen cycle. He currently serves as President-Elect of the Biogeosciences Section of the American Geophysical Union. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has been named as a Highly Cited Researcher by the Institute for Scientific Information. He earned his doctorate in forestry at North Carolina State University.
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| Scott Goetz, Ph.D. Deputy Director, Senior Scientist |
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| Dr. Goetz’s research focuses on ecosystem responses to environmental change, including monitoring and modeling the linkages and feedbacks between forests and climate, land use change and disturbance. Much of this research makes use of satellite imagery. Before joining the Woods Hole Research Center in 2003, where he is now a senior scientist and deputy director, he was a member of the research faculty at the University of Maryland, where he maintains an adjunct faculty appointment. He also worked at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for 10 years and has authored, to date, more than 100 refereed journal publications and book chapters, and edited 3 special issue compilations. He has served on numerous professional panels, including for the US National Academy of Sciences, and is a member of the Science Steering Group of the North America Carbon Program and the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment. He is an Associate Editor of Remote Sensing of Environment and is on the editorial board of Environmental Research Letters. He is a past editorial board member of the Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences. He graduated from the Pennsylvania State University (BS), the University of California (MS), and the University of Maryland (PhD).
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| Alessandro Baccini, Ph.D. Assistant Scientist |
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| Dr. Baccini is a remote sensing scientist whose interests focus on the use of satellite data for the monitoring of forest carbon, land cover, land cover change and the effects of environmental change on the terrestrial carbon cycle at the regional and global scale. Before joining the Center he was a research associate at Boston University and worked at the Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations for the Forest Resources Assessment 1990 and 2000 monitoring tropical deforestation. He received his doctorate from Boston University.
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| Pieter S. A. Beck, Ph.D. Research Associate |
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| Dr. Beck is a vegetation ecologist who specializes in remote sensing and modeling of vegetation in high latitudes. His particular focus is on the effects of climate variability and change on the phenology, distribution, and carbon dynamics of vegetation. Dr. Beck has previously worked as an independent advisor for environmental impact assessment in northern Scandinavia. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Tromsø, Norway, and the Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) in the Netherlands.
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| Logan T. Berner, M.S. Research Assistant |
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| Mr. Berner is an environmental researcher who is interested in forest ecology and the impacts of climate change on natural systems and human societies. He specializes in the use of satellite remote sensing and geographical information systems (GIS), particularly as they relate to mapping land cover and vegetation. Much of his work has been focused on high-latitude regions, including Alaska, Canada, and Russia. Prior to coming to the Center, he worked at the Research Corporation of the University of Hawai'i mapping invasive species on Hawai'i Island. He holds degrees in environmental science from the University of Alaska Southeast (B.S.) and Western Washington University (M.S.).
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| Jesse B. Bishop, M.S. Research Associate |
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| Mr. Bishop uses remote sensing and GIS to monitor and assess forest ecosystems. During a break in his time at the Center, he focused on the spatial characterization of the geology and hydrology of eastern Nevada. For his graduate research, he used remote sensing to monitor forest restoration sites in New Zealand. He received degrees in forest science (B.S.F.) and natural resources (M.S.) from the University of New Hampshire.
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| I. Foster Brown, Ph.D. Senior Scientist |
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| Dr. Brown is an environmental geochemist whose research interests focus on global environmental change and sustainable development in the southwestern Amazon Basin. He coordinates the Center's program dealing with climate change and land use in the trinational southwestern Amazonia. Dr. Brown spent over twenty years as a faculty member of the Graduate Program in Environmental Geochemistry at the Federal Fluminense University in Niteroi, Brazil, and is currently on the faculty of the Federal University of Acre, Brazil. He earned his doctorate in environmental geochemistry at Northwestern University.
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| Ekaterina Bulygina, M.S. Research Associate |
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| Ms. Bulygina manages the Center's Luce Laboratory of environmental chemistry. She has extensive experience in laboratory management and has worked at Moscow State University's museum of zoology and in the chemistry laboratory of the Upstate Fresh Water Institute, Syracuse, NY. Ms. Bulygina received her master's degree in ecology and hydrobiology from Moscow State University.
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| Glenn K. Bush, Ph.D. Assistant Scientist |
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| Dr. Bush is an environmental economist who specializes in welfare economics, resource valuation, and environmental cost-benefit analysis. His work has focused on quantitative valuation of forest conservation strategies for forest-adjacent households, as well as the microeconomic and social determinants of forest conservation. He is currently concerned with developing and testing combined econometric and spatial models on the drivers and determinants of land cover change. Dr. Bush has previously worked in Africa and in Central and Southeast Asia as a researcher, project manager, and consultant on natural resource management and conservation projects in the public and private sector. He has held positions with the UK Government Department for International Development, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. He obtained his M.Sc. in Agricultural Economics from the University of London, Wye College, and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Stirling, UK.
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| Oliver Cartus, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Fellow |
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| Dr. Cartus is a geographer whose research interests focus on the use of remote sensing for the mapping of the Earths land cover. He is particularly interested in the application of radar and interferometric radar for the large-scale mapping of forest biophysical parameters such as growing stock volume and biomass. Dr. Cartus holds a degree in geography and a doctorate in natural science from the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany.
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| Leandro Castello, Ph.D. Research Associate |
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| Dr. Castello studies the ecology and management of fishery resources in the Amazon. He is experienced in arapaima fisheries, and his research has addressed fish migration, spawning habitat, population dynamics, traditional knowledge, and common property resources management. He is now studying the ecological mechanisms responsible for fisheries production in the basin, and assessing management options and the impacts of climate change and infrastructure development. He is also actively developing management policy frameworks for sustainable fisheries. His work has influenced regional policies in Brazil and Guyana. Dr. Castello received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York.
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| Michael T. Coe, Ph.D. Senior Scientist/Coordinator of the Amazon Group |
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| Dr. Coe is an earth system scientist who is particularly interested in the causes and consequences of water resource variability. He uses data and earth system computer models to study how climate variability interacts with human land use and water management practices to cause changes in regional energy and water cycles. He currently has an active field campaign in Mato Grosso, Brazil investigating the impacts of frequent fire and agricultural land conversion on the cycling of water from precipitation to soil, plants, and streams. He is also leading computer modeling projects aimed at better understanding the role of intact forests in maintaining the climate system of the Amazon. Dr. Coe previously spent seven years as a scientist at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, University of Wisconsin-Madison and has been a visiting scientist at Lund University, Sweden, and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany. He received his Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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| Tina A. Cormier, M.S. Research Assistant |
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| Ms. Cormier uses remote sensing and GIS to model species’ responses to changes in environmental conditions, such as climate change. She also develops materials for and conducts capacity building workshops in developing countries across the tropics and uses the materials to teach participants how to combine field measurements with remotely sensed data in order to monitor carbon in their forests. Before joining the Center, she worked on spatial-statistical modeling of vernal pool locations in Massachusetts, as well as regional evapotranspiration estimation and land cover classification in central Nevada. Ms. Cormier received her H.B.A. in Environmental Science from Saint Anselm College and her M.S. in Natural Resources from the University of New Hampshire.
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| Jill Derwin, M.E.M. Research Assistant |
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| Ms. Derwin uses remote sensing and geospatial analysis to map and assess forest characteristics and biomass in the tropics. She received a B.Sc. in Natural Resources and the Environment with a concentration in Geomatics from the University of Connecticut and a M.E.M. from Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. Her Master's Project focused on trends in aboveground carbon accumulation in secondary forests within a sub-region of the Brazilian Amazon.
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| Gregory J. Fiske, M.S. GIS Manager/Research Associate |
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| Mr. Fiske is a geographer interested in the use of cartography and other techniques of modern geographic information science to sustain the health of the natural environment. He manages the many technical aspects of the Center’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS). As a Research Associate, he applies his skills to various research projects that involve both GIS and Remote Sensing techniques. Prior to joining the Center, Mr. Fiske worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. He earned his B.S. from Plymouth State University in New Hampshire and his M.S. from Oregon State University.
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| Carol Franco, Ph.D. Research Associate/Mexico-REDD Project Administrator |
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| Dr. Franco supports projects on forest mapping and monitoring and fosters climate change policies in Latin America. She provides logistical support, manages projects budgets and operational plans, and develops and implements REDD+ policy frameworks on the ground. Her research has focused on environmental and socio-economic policies, food security, and climate change policies. She has worked as the Carbon Finance Officer of the United Nations Development Program in the Dominican Republic, and prior to joining the Center, she was a Research Assistant Professor at the Institute for Sustainable Solutions at Portland (OR) State University. Dr. Franco received her Ph.D. from the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
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| Kevin Guay, B.S. Research Assistant |
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| Mr. Guay uses remote sensing and GIS to study carbon exchange in high-latitude regions, and he has been developing a new model to estimate global carbon fluxes based on land use and land change. He has used historic radar data and water quality measurements to investigate the relationship between rainfall and water quality in the New York Finger Lakes and remote sensing data to study deforestation and forest degradation in the Amazon. He has worked in the engineering department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where he programmed various oceanographic instruments. Mr. Guay earned his B.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Hobart College.
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| Robert Max Holmes, Ph.D. Senior Scientist |
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| Dr. Holmes is an earth system scientist with broad interests in the responses and feedbacks of coupled land-ocean systems to environmental and global change. Most of his current research focuses on large rivers and their watersheds and addresses how climate change and other disturbances are impacting the cycles of water and chemicals in the environment. Dr. Holmes has several ongoing projects in the Arctic (field sites in Russia, Canada, and Alaska) and has recently begun working in Africa and Asia (Congo, Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Yangtze watersheds). He has also studied desert streams in the southwestern United States, stream/riparian ecosystems in France, and estuaries in Massachusetts. He is strongly committed to integrating education and outreach into his research projects, particularly by exposing K-12 and undergraduate students to the excitement of scientific research.
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Richard A. Houghton, Ph.D. Senior Scientist George Masters Woodwell Chair for Global Ecology |
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Dr. Houghton is an ecologist with interests in the role that terrestrial ecosystems play in climate change and the global carbon cycle. He co-ordinates the Center's efforts to understand the problems of global warming and climate change, especially the role biotic systems play in this accelerating process. His area of expertise has been documentation of changes in land use and determination of historic and current sources and sinks of carbon resulting directly from human activity. Dr. Houghton has held positions as Assistant Scientist at the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory and as Research Associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He earned his doctorate in ecology from SUNY at Stony Brook.
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| Holly Hughes, B.S. Research Assistant |
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Ms. Hughes works on the Center's carbon cycling research program in the Howland, Maine forest (www.howlandforest.org), partnering with many collaborators including the U.S. Forest Service, the University of Maine, and Queen’s University. Previously, Hughes managed a soil warming project in Howland where she studied the effects of soil warming on carbon flux through the forest floor, as well as other environmental indicators. Prior to joining the Center staff, she worked on a research project for Rutgers University designed to help farmers reduce their use of chemicals. She received a B.S. in natural resources with a concentration in soil science from the University of Maine.
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| Patrick Jantz, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Fellow |
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Dr. Jantz studies the relationship between human activities and changes in land use and land cover using geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial analytical tools. His primary interests include the ecosystem impacts of land conversion for residential development, climate change effects on the composition and function of eastern U.S. forests, and the use of data driven climate and land change scenarios to inform management of parks and protected areas. He received his B.S. in Biology from the University of New Mexico and his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Environmental Science & Management from the Bren School at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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| Josef Kellndorfer, Ph.D. Senior Scientist/Coordinator of the REDD Group |
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| Dr. Kellndorfer’s research focuses on the monitoring and assessment of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and the dissemination of Earth observation findings to policy makers through education and capacity building. Using geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and modeling, he studies land-use, land cover and climate change on a regional and global scale. His projects include carbon and biomass mapping of the United States, mapping forest cover across the tropical forested regions of Africa, Latin America and Asia through the generation of consistent data sets of high-resolution, cloud-free radar imagery. Before joining the Center, Kellndorfer was a research scientist with the Radiation Laboratory in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. He holds a diploma degree in physical geography and a doctorate in geosciences from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany. He serves on various expert working groups within NASA, the Group on Earth Observation, and GOFC-GOLD addressing forest carbon measurements in vegetation from remote sensing with existing and future remote sensing and field measurements.
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Wendy Kingerlee, B.S. Research Assistant/Amazon Program Administrator |
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| Ms. Kingerlee is responsible for coordination of the Center’s Amazon Program. She provides project administration, logistical support, communication, and collaboration to the Amazon team and its Brazilian counterpart, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM). Before joining the Amazon program, she worked as a research assistant in the Center’s soil carbon program. Ms. Kingerlee has also worked for the Agriculture Department in the County of Santa Cruz, California. She received her B.S. in Plant and Soil Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
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| Nadine T. Laporte, Ph.D. Associate Scientist |
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Dr. Laporte is a biologist whose research centers on the applications of satellite imagery to tropical forest ecosystems, including vegetation & carbon mapping, land-use change, and deforestation causes and consequences on carbon and biodiversity. She has been involved in numerous environmental projects in Central Africa over the past 20 years, working with in-country scientists, foresters, and international conservation organizations to develop integrated forest monitoring systems and promote forest conservation. She received her doctorate in tropical biogeography from l'Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France. Before joining the Woods Hole Research Center, she worked at the Joint Research Center in Italy, the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland. She serves also on various expert working groups within NASA, UN-REDD, and the World Bank, among others, addressing forest carbon monitoring systems from remote sensing and field measurements to help Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) as part of United Nations climate change policy.
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| Paul A. Lefebvre, M.A. Research Associate |
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| Paul Lefebvre is a specialist in Geographic Information Systems and field instrumentation, who has worked in the Center’s Amazon program since 1995. From 1995 to 1998 he lived in Brazil while helping to establish IPAM's Remote Sensing and GIS laboratory. He is now responsible for setting up and maintaining many of the monitoring instruments used at our field stations in Brazil, and for training field personnel. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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| Marcia N. Macedo, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Fellow |
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| Dr. Macedo is a landscape ecologist interested in understanding the causes of human-induced land change and its consequences for aquatic ecosystems. She combines remote sensing, field observations, and statistical models to examine how land use and land management influence the connectivity and ecological function of tropical streams at multiple scales. Her current research focuses on the land use dynamics and ecological tradeoffs associated with agricultural expansion and intensification in the Amazon. Dr. Macedo earned her M.Sc. in Sustainable Development & Conservation Biology from the University of Maryland and her Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, & Environmental Biology from Columbia University.
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| Paul James Mann, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Fellow |
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| Dr. Mann is an earth system scientist focusing on organic matter within aquatic ecosystems. His current research focuses upon identifying controls on the flux, age and composition of terrestrial organic carbon exported by rivers to the ocean. His particular research interests include natural and human induced changes to water chemistry, through sunlight and bacterial alteration, or land-use and climate-driven effects. Mann previously worked for the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) after receiving his MSc. from the National Oceanographic Centre in the UK. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK.
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| David G. McGrath, Ph.D. Associate Scientist |
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| Dr. McGrath is a geographer who, in collaboration with the Center's partner organization in Brazil, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia (IPAM), is working to develop policies and institutional arrangements for the co-management of Amazon floodplain and upland forests by smallholder communities. On a broader level, McGrath works at the interface between conservation, land use and development policies in the Amazon basin. He holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a faculty member on indefinite leave from the Federal University of Pará in Belém, Brazil.
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| Susan M. Natali, Ph.D. Assistant Scientist |
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| Dr. Natali’s research examines the response of terrestrial ecosystems to a changing environment, with an emphasis on feedbacks to carbon cycling from northern high latitude systems. While a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Florida, she worked on permafrost ecosystems, establishing a large-scale warming experiment in interior Alaska. That project tests hypotheses about feedbacks to the global carbon cycle as a result of warming air and soil temperatures and thawing permafrost. More recently, she established a tundra drying experiment to examine interactive effects of permafrost thaw and changes in soil moisture on ecosystem carbon exchange. Dr. Natali was a National Science Foundation Polar Programs Postdoctoral Research Fellow. She holds a B.S. from Villanova University and a Ph.D. from Stony Brook University.
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| Amanda E. W. Poston, B.A. Africa and Pantropical Project Administrator |
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| Ms. Poston manages budgets and provides administrative and logistic support for the Center’s Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equateur Province. Before joining the Center, she was a grants manager for the University of the Virgin Islands’ Division of Science and Mathematics undergraduate programs. She has lived in France and in Madagascar, where she worked at the Malagasy Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments. Ms. Poston earned her B.A. in International Relations from Boston University.
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| Kilaparti Ramakrishna, Ph.D. - On Leave of Absence Sara Shallenberger Brown Chair |
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| Dr. Ramakrishna is an expert in international environmental law. He is responsible for international issues including law and policy aspects associated with global climatic change, conservation and utilization of world forests, biodiversity, environmental governance, and developing country perspectives. Dr. Ramakrishna was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, a Fellow at the Marine Policy and Ocean Management Center of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and a visiting research fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu. On leave of absence from the Center from 2006-2010, he served as Chief of Crosssectoral Environmental Issues, as Senior Advisor on Environmental Law and Conventions, and as Principal Policy Advisor to the Executive Director, all at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi. Dr. Ramakrishna holds a master’s and doctorate in international environmental law from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
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| Kathleen Savage, M.Sc. Research Associate |
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| Ms. Savage is currently working in the Center's carbon cycling program. She obtained a B.Sc. degree and an M.Sc. degree in Geography at York University and McGill University, respectively. Her thesis work examined the exchange of carbon dioxide and methane in boreal forest soils. Following her graduate studies, she has worked in northern Manitoba examining net ecosystem exchange in boreal wetlands.
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| Robert G.M. Spencer, Ph.D. Assistant Scientist |
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| Dr. Spencer is a biogeochemist whose research focuses on organic matter, especially dissolved organic matter (DOM) in aquatic ecosystems, which plays a multifaceted role in the environment. Dr. Spencer’s research broadly aims to examine the influence of hydrology, ecosystem processing, surface water quality, land-use and land management changes and global climate change on the sources, transformations and fate of organic matter in terrestrial and aquatic environments. His current research is focused on a broad range of environments from the tropics to the Arctic, from soils and glaciers through rivers and estuaries and into the ocean. Dr. Spencer earned his doctorate from the Universities of Newcastle and Edinburgh, UK.
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| Thomas A. Stone, M.A. Senior Research Associate |
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| Mr. Stone is an environmental geologist who uses remote-sensing technology to map vegetation and to determine rates of land use change. He uses satellite imagery and GIS data to determine the rates of deforestation in Siberia, Amazonia, Panama, and in the northeastern US. The results of this work assist in the determination of biotic contributions to the global climate change problem and provide information for land use planning. Before joining the Center, Mr. Stone held a research position in remote sensing at the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. He holds a master's degree in earth sciences from Dartmouth College.
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| Emma Suddick, Ph.D. Research Associate |
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| Dr. Suddick is a biogeochemist whose research focuses on the interface between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The fundamental aim of her research is to examine the impacts of climate and land-use change on the biogeochemical cycling of carbon and nitrogen within these ecosystems. Dr. Suddick’s current research interests include investigating the role that agricultural systems play in climate change and water quality, as well as determining the contribution agricultural management practices have upon climatically active trace gas emissions and carbon sequestration on a regional and national scale. Prior to joining the staff of the Center, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Suddick received her doctorate from the University of Aberdeen, U.K.
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| Wayne S. Walker, Ph.D. Assistant Scientist |
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| Dr. Walker is an ecologist and remote sensing specialist interested in applications of satellite imagery to the assessment and monitoring of temperate and tropical ecosystems at regional to global scales. His research focuses on measuring and mapping forest structural attributes, land cover/land use change and terrestrial carbon stocks in support of habitat management, ecosystem conservation and carbon-cycle science. He is committed to building institutional capacity in the tools and techniques used to measure and monitor forests, working in collaboration with governments, NGOs and indigenous communities across the tropics. Walker holds degrees in forest ecology (M.S.) and remote sensing (Ph.D.) from the University of Michigan.
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| Scott Zolkos, B.A. Research Assistant | |
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Mr. Zolkos assists with GIS and remote sensing studies of forest productivity dynamics and works with the Global Rivers research team. Before joining the Center, he worked for the Buzzards Bay Coalition’s Water Quality Monitoring Program, and he assisted NOAA with benthic habitat mapping south of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Mr. Zolkos studied aquatic biogeochemistry as a student at Sea Education Association (SEA) Semester’s Oceans and Climate program. He earned his B.A. in environmental science and geology from Middlebury College.
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| Portraits by Gigi Gatewood. | |
