My broad interests are vegetation community dynamics, arid lands ecology and arid lands conservation. My current research focuses on applying remote sensing and GIS technology to the study of vegetation communities and dynamics in the southeastern Arizona. Recent and on-going projects include: monitoring vegetation response at watershed restoration sites by combining field data with LiDAR and photogrammetry data; tracking temporal changes in cienegas, desert wetlands, using multispectral satellite imagery; and classifying vegetation communities in Saguaro National Park using satellite imagery and LiDAR data. I earned a M.S. in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Technology at the University of Arizona in 2014 and a B.S. in Zoology from Texas A&M University in 2002. During the intervening years I worked on several research and management projects with a variety of federal agencies. Highlights include researching the population and distribution of meso-carnivores in the Sierra Nevada with the U.S. Forest Service, restoring off-highway vehicle incursions in the Mojave Desert with the Bureau of Land Management, and monitoring long term vegetation plots in southern Arizona with the National Park Service. I began as a student contractor with the Western Geographic Science Center of the USGS in April 2014. In September 2015 I joined the USGS as a Pathways Recent Graduate intern.

Geography