People

Dr. David Saah

Title: Managing Principal

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Dr. Saah has been broadly trained as an environmental scientist with expertise in a number of areas including: landscape ecology, ecosystem ecology, hydrology, geomorphology, ecosystem modeling, natural hazard modeling, remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS) and geospatial analysis. He has used these skills to conduct research primarily at the landscape level in a variety of systems. Dr. Saah has participated in research projects throughout the United States and Internationally. His academic research uses integrated geospatial science for multi-scale mapping, monitoring and modeling of environmental spatial heterogeneity, particularly in riparian, savanna, and forest ecosystems. These efforts include quantification of change in landscape pattern, investigating the linkages between pattern and processes, and understanding the pattern-process dynamic within different environmental management regimes. To complement this, Dr. Saah’s consulting research interest and experience include: developing holistic decision support systems for resource management, assessing natural hazards, and quantifying ecosystem service valuation. In addition, all of his research addresses access, availability, and accuracy of geospatial and environmental datasets, and scale in natural resource and environmental research. Dr. Saah is committed to producing high quality research projects that integrate the most current science and technology. He is dedicated to the accurate dissemination of results from these endeavors through innovative presentations, publications, and workshops.

Dr. Austin Troy

Title: Principal

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In addition to being a principal of SIG, Dr. Troy is an Associate Professor at the University of Vermont, with a primary appointment in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and a secondary appointment in Computer Science. He has been at Vermont since 2001, where he has taught courses including introductory GIS, graduate level GIS, advanced spatial methods, Integrating GIS and statistics, GIS for urban ecology, ecosystem management, and land use planning and economics. His recent sponsored research includes economically-based urban growth and transportation simulation in the state of Vermont using UrbanSim and TransCAD, land cover mapping and Phosphorus export analysis for the Lake Champlain Basin, spatially explicit valuation of ecosystem services for the state of New Jersey, analysis of the effects of environmental amenities and disamenities on housing values in Baltimore and New Jersey, analysis of the relationship between residential land use patterns and Nitrogen flux in portions of the Chesapeake watershed, development of a new system of parcel-level object oriented classification of remote sensing imagery for urban vegetation inventory and management, statistical modeling of the predictors of urban vegetation cover, development of urban forest management GIS tools, analysis of the effects of suburban development on wildlife habitat and watershed health in Vermont, and development of new methodologies for mapping urban sprawl. Throughout his research he is interested in applying novel spatial and econometric methods. Dr. Troy is Co-director of the UVM Spatial Analysis Lab. He is also a fellow of the Gund Institute of Ecological Economics and a Co-Principal Investigator on the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, which is a long-term ecological research (LTER) project of the National Science Foundation. He served for four years as a Planning Commissioner for the city of Burlington. Dr. Troy has done extensive consulting for SIG on spatially explicit ecosystem service valuation and benefits transfer, GIS mapping, cartography, and watershed management. He has a bachelor's degree from Yale, a Master's degree from Yale School of Forestry and Environment Studies and a PhD from the department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at U.C. Berkeley.

Dr. Bijan Khazai

Title: Senior Scientist

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Dr. Bijan Khazai is currently a senior research scientist at Karlsruhe University's Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology (CEDIM).He holds Masters and Doctoral degrees in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, where he worked on developing GIS-based landslide hazard assessment models in the San Francisco Bay Area. Before moving to Germany, Dr. Khazai was a post-doctoral research fellow at Kyoto University's Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI) and Columbia University's Earth Institute. He has been involved in the socio-economic assessment of recovery and reconstruction processes working in the field following disasters in Iran, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and New Orleans. Dr. Khazai's research interests are social vulnerability analysis, megacity and urban risk, and information technology for post-disaster recovery planning. As a project specialist for Earthquake and Megacities Initiative (EMI), he has also worked in a number of applied projects in Istanbul, Amman and Metro Manila and Mumbai.

Dr. Timothy Robards

Title: Senior Scientist

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Dr. Timothy Robards has worked as a forest growth scientist, forest practices regulator, multi-disciplinary research manager and forest-climate change mitigation and adaptation researcher.  Dr. Robards is a California Registered Professional Forester with the State of California and a Certified Forester ® with the Society of American Foresters.  As a graduate of Purdue University, he received a BSF in Forestry with an emphasis in Forest Management and Soil Science.  He received a MS and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley while studying Forest Biometrics.  Dr. Robards has over 20 years experience developing statistical models of forest growth and mortality, having recently developed climate-sensitive tree diameter and height growth models for six Sierra Nevada conifer species.  As the first Sustained Yield Forester for the State of California, Dr. Robards was the project manager for the first Sustained Yield Plan submitted under California’s new regulations in 1996.  Dr. Robards served for 8 years as the Research Manager for the Demonstration State Forests, developing research infrastructure and managing a competitive grants program.  He was the quantitative committee lead for the Climate Action Reserve (CAR) forestry protocol workgroup that assisted in the development of version 3 of the protocols.  He has also been active in the development of forest carbon offsets under a number cap and trade programs.  As part of the 2010 statewide assessment, Dr. Robards has completed an analysis of forest carbon storage and sequestration covering over 30 million acres.  As a forester, Dr. Robards is also a wildland firefighter with experience in plans and situation units, including managing structure damage assessments on large fires.

Dr. William Keeton

Title: Senior Scientist

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In addition to being a senior scientist at SIG, William Keeton is an Associate Professor of Forest Ecology and Forestry at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.  He directs UVM’s Carbon Dynamics Laboratory, co-chairs the graduate program in Forest and Wildlife Science, and direct’s the Vermont Forest Ecosystem Management Demonstration Project.  Dr. Keeton received his BS in Natural Resources from Cornell University and his Masters in Conservation Biology and Policy from Yale University.  He holds a Ph.D. in Forest Ecology from the University of Washington.  His current research focuses on forest carbon management including modeling, climate change impacts on forest ecosystems, natural disturbance-based silvicultural systems, natural disturbance ecology, the structure and function of late-successional forest systems, forest-stream interactions, and forest biodiversity.  Dr. Keeton served as a Fulbright Scholar in Ukraine (2008) and continues to work actively on sustainable forest management in Eastern Europe.  He has been a P.I. or Co-P.I. on over 1.5 million in research grants and served as major adviser for 14 graduate students.  His record includes 60 publications (35 peer-reviewed, including 26 journal papers). 

Dr. Michael I. Westphal

Title: Senior Scientist and International Program Manager

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Dr. Michael I. Westphal is an expert in climate change and international development.  He has consulted in this capacity at the World Bank for the last four years in various regions, including Europe and Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, conducting various statistical and spatial analyses (e.g. involving global climate model data) and writing policy reports across disciplines, such as water resource management, agriculture and biodiversity.  He is one of the authors of two recent World Bank books: World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change (the most influential Bank publication each year) and Adapting to Climate Change in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.  He also helped develop the ADAPT screening tool to assess the climate risks of Bank projects and is the intellectual architect of the World Bank Climate Change Data Portal (http://sdwebx.worldbank.org/climateportal/).  Besides consulting for the World Bank, Michael has consulted for the African, Asian and Inter-American Development Banks on climate change and biodiversity.  He is formerly an American Association for the Advancement of Science Policy Fellow in the Office of International Affairs at the EPA, where we worked on a science cooperation program in the former Soviet Union. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management from UC Berkeley, where he concentrated on ecological modeling and conservation planning in Australia; he is the co-developer of software for optimal habitat restoration.

Dr. Matthew Hurteau

Title: Senior Scientist

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In addition to being a senior scientist at SIG, Dr. Hurteau is an Assistant Research Professor at Northern Arizona University in the Department of Biological Sciences.  He received a B.S. in Forestry from Northern Arizona University.  Dr. Hurteau holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California, Davis where he examined the impacts of predicted changes in precipitation from climate change, increases in anthropogenic nitrogen deposition, and fire on forest understory plant diversity and productivity.  Dr. Hurteau’s current research focus is on climate change mitigation and adaptation in fire-prone forests.  He uses a combination of field and modeling studies to quantify the impacts of forest structure on fire effects and carbon.  His work bridges traditional academic boundaries by examining the forest carbon cycle in a carbon market context, including developing a forest carbon risk valuation metric and a metric for valuing impermanent carbon offsets as a function of their contribution to reducing compliance costs in a cap-and-trade framework.  Most recently Dr. Hurteau has been involved in establishing an applied M.S. degree in Climate Science and Solutions at Northern Arizona University with funding from the National Science Foundation. 

Dr. Shelly Cole

Title: Senior Scientist

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Shelly Cole joins SIG as a researcher and program manager.  Shelly is a physiological plant ecologist and received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara.  She has over fifteen years of research experience investigating ecological questions primarily in the desert and coastal shrub and woodland environments of the western US.  The topics of her projects range from plant growth responses to summer drought and fire to root foraging behavior of plants in heterogeneous environments.  Shelly has extensive experience in designing and conducting lab, greenhouse and field-research projects.  Her training has allowed her to transition into more applied research projects including botanical surveys, mapping projects and statistical and critical analysis of environmental data.  Shelly has given many professional presentations and has published and reviewed material in peer-reviewed journals.  Over the last decade, she has taught ecology and environmental science courses at Antioch University, UC Santa Barbara and most recently at UC Berkeley leading the capstone thesis course in their Environmental Sciences program.

Dr. Qi Chen

Title: Senior Scientist

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Dr. Qi Chen is a senior scientist with SIG and an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in from Nanjing University in China and a Ph.D. degree in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from UC, Berkeley. He specializes in geospatial technologies (remote sensing and GIS), statistical learning, ecosystem modeling, and climate change. Dr. Chen is an expert in lidar remote sensing, especially its application in vegetation analysis. His research in lidar spans the use of airborne, spaceborne, and ground-based laser systems to map vegetation structure and physiognomy from individual tree scale to region and global scales. His recent research involves the synergistic use of lidar data with optical imagery such as high spatial resolution and hyperspectral imagery for vegetation mapping. Dr. Chen is also an ecosystem modeler focusing on the impacts of land use and land cover change, climate change on ecosystem water and carbon cycling. In this regard, he is particularly interested in the use of remote sensing derived products to parameterize, initialize, and validate ecosystem models.

Dr. Thomas Buchholz

Title: Research Scientist

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Dr. Buchholz has research and work experience in the management and economics of natural forests, timber plantations, and short rotation energy crops (e.g. willow shrub plantations) for biomass production.  He earned his Ph.D. from SUNY-ESF in bioenergy sustainability assessments and his M.Sc. in sustainable forestry in Germany; he is especially knowledgeable of the US and European bioenergy research and policy communities, and industry.  In the course of his doctoral and post-doctoral research, he has developed sustainability frameworks for bioenergy systems with substantive stakeholder inputs, and tested them on case studies in the US and abroad.  In 2007, Dr. Buchholz worked with the forestry program of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria, investigating the application of Multi-Criteria Analysis tools for participatory sustainability assessments of bioenergy systems.  He has been the lead author of several reports on forest bioenergy and energy plantation economics across the globe.  Recent work includes micro- and macroeconomic analysis of forest based bioenergy use in the Northeastern US. Dr Buchholz’s main interest is applied research working on the interface of policy and science.  The motivation for his work is to directly assist stakeholders and decision makers in the natural resource field in identifying lasting forest management and bioenergy solutions.  He has repeatedly applied his research methods and findings in consulting assignments to industry, governmental and non-governmental organizations.

Dr. Ken Bagstad

Title: Research Scientist

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Dr. Ken Bagstad is an environmental scientist specializing in ecological economics and modeling at the landscape scale, with additional experience in botany and field ecology.  Ken is currently a post-doctoral associate working as the project economist for the joint U.S. Geological Survey-Bureau of Land Management Ecosystem Services Valuation Pilot. For this work, Ken is evaluating alternative tools to assess and value ecosystem services using monetary and non-monetary methods.  This work is focused on the San Pedro River, in southeast Arizona, and has the long-term goal of determining how to bring ecosystem services concepts into the field of public land management.  Ken also serves as the lead modeler for the NSF-funded Artificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services (ARIES) project, which is building a series of web-accessible tools to map, assess, and value ecosystem services for environmental decision-making.  In 2009, Ken completed his dissertation “Ecological economic applications for urban and regional sustainability.”  His Ph.D. work spanned several themes in ecological economics, including the science, economics, and policy of ecosystem services, use of the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) at local scales in Vermont and Ohio, and the effects of tax and subsidy policies on coastal development patterns.  Ken received a B.A. in botany and environmental studies from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1999, and his M.S. from Arizona State University in 2002.  For his Master's research, he studied the conflicts between groundwater pumping and ecosystem health of the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona, focusing specifically on riparian plant communities. He has also studied tropical plant taxonomy in Central and South America.  Following his Master’s work, Ken worked as an environmental consultant in Chicago, Illinois, and was active in restoration of native wetland, prairie, and savanna ecosystems in the Midwestern U.S.  Ken has also assisted in ecosystem service valuation studies for Louisiana, Washington State, and Ontario, advised researchers working on GPI studies for Michigan and Utah, and explored markets and ecosystem service-based funding mechanisms for ecological restoration in Illinois and Washington State.

Mr. Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne

Title: Research Scientist

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Mr. O’Neil-Dunne has applied his expertise in geospatial technology to a broad range of natural resource related issues such as urban ecosystem assessment, environmental justice, wildlife habitat mapping, high-elevation forest decline, land cover change detection, community health, and water quality modeling.  He co-developed the U.S. Forest Service’s protocols for Urban Tree Canopy Assessment and has helped dozens of cities apply these protocols to assess and improve their green infrastructure.  Mr. O’Neil-Dunne is well known for his expertise in object-based image analysis (OBIA), speaks regularly on a wide range of geospatial related topics at conferences, and teaches advances courses in geospatial technology.  With over a decade of military service, including key leadership positions within the geospatial intelligence community, he brings a wealth of experience on matters of national security.  Most recently, he helped develop an autonomous system for damage detection from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery for the U.S. Air Force. He is the recipient of the Vermont Spatial Data Partnership's 2008 Outstanding Achievement Award, a member of the team recognized with the New York State GIS Partnership Award in 2008, and was awarded the eCognition Black Belt by Nobel Laureate Dr. Gerd Binnig in 2009.  Mr. O’Neil-Dunne contributes regularly to the widely-read geospatial blog, Letters from the SAL.

Mr. Tadashi Moody

Title: Project Manager & Research Scientist

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Tadashi is a forest ecologist with an emphasis on wildland fire history and landscape dynamics. Prior to coming on board with SIG, he spent four years working at UC Berkeley"s Center for Fire Research and Outreach, where his research included studying such topics as the influence of fuel age structure on landscape fire patterns, and spatial patterns of Santa Ana winds in relation to fire history.  Tadashi received his MS from UC Berkeley in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, and his BS from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in Forestry and Natural Resources.

Mr. Jason Moghaddas

Title: Research Scientist

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Mr. Moghaddas received both his BS and MS from UC Berkeley, with his studies and research focused on fire and riparian ecology. Mr. Moghaddas brings over a decade of experience in natural resource project management to SIG. As a project manager for the Fire and Fire Surrogate Study, Mr. Moghaddas successfully coordinated an interdisciplinary team of scientists for a study on the effects of fuel treatments on mixed conifer ecosystem process and structure. Through his on-going work on this and other studies, Mr. Moghaddas had been a lead or co-author on 19 published scientific papers. In addition to a strong research background, Mr. Moghaddas brings the practical experience of being a current Registered Professional Forest (#2774) along with extensive experience in the Sierras as a wildland fire fighter and wildlife a field technician. Through his work as a Fire Ecologist on the Plumas National Forest, Mr. Moghaddas worked as part of an US Forest Service interdisciplinary team to plan and conduct National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis for landscape level fuel treatments in a politically charged climate. Currently, Mr. Moghaddas is the Conservation Director for the Feather River Land Trust. In this capacity, he works primarily with large land owners to help develop and fund conservation easements on working ranches in Plumas County.

Mrs. Sarah Robards-Sheaks

Title: Assistant Research Scientist

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Sarah Robards-Sheaks attended the University of San Francisco where she received her B.S. in Biology with a concentration in Ecology. Her primary research interests include conservation issues such as the maintenance of functional local systems using an ecosystem management approach.  She has also worked with local non-profit groups providing public education on the San Francisco Bay ecosystem and watershed.

Mr. Travis Kay-Rugen

Title: Assistant Research Scientist

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Collaborators

As collaborators, the following scientists bring extensive expertise to SIG projects:

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Dr. David Ganz

Affiliation: The Nature Conservancy

Title: Forest Carbon Lead Scientist

Email: dganz@tnc.org

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David Ganz is a senior scientist with The Nature Conservancy’s Climate Change Team. David is an expert in forest science, policy and management who also has experience integrating forest and fire science with some of conservation’s most important new opportunities and emerging issues: sustainable livelihoods, climate change adaptation, ecosystem services, avoided deforestation and degradation, and community forestry.  David has worked for United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) positioned at the Regional Community Forestry Center in Bangkok, Thailand. In his role with FAO, David managed a variety of projects focused on Southwestern China and Southeast Asia. More recently, he was a senior scientist in charge of forestry and fire science projects for TSS Consultants and vice president of international operations for the Renewable Energy Institute. Recent projects have included organizing and facilitating both the China E5 Biofuels Assessment and the Pinchot Institute’s independent science review of the Quincy Library Group pilot project. Dr. Ganz’s doctoral research in the Sierra Nevada looked at forest health and management implications of various prescribed burning and thinning treatments. More recently he has focused on facilitating processes in which local communities have substantial involvement in deciding the objectives and practices involved in preventing, controlling or utilizing fires. He has published more than 40 papers in technical journals with a primary focus in the fields of forest carbon science and management, fire science, ecosystem services, forest health, silviculture and community forestry.

Dr. Matt Wilson

Affiliation: CH2MHill

Title: Business Devel. Specialist & Principal Consultant

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Matthew Wilson is a business development expert and principal economist for an international climate change services practice at CH2M HILL. With an additional seven years experience as a professor in environmental economics at the University of Vermont, Matthew brings extensive research and consulting experience to SIG’s Ecosystem Services and Forests and Carbon programs as one of our main collaborators.  Matthew received his MA in geography from the University of Colorado, Boulder and his Ph.D. in sociology (minor in economics and urban planning) from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  With 27 peer-reviewed publications and numerous speaking engagements worldwide, he is an internationally recognized expert on the economics of environmental market mechanisms such as the valuation of ecosystem services and the evolution of new energy and carbon markets.  He has provided expert advisory services to a number of Local, State and Federal government organizations over his career on the development of incentive based regulation.  Matthew can also provide sound advice on climate change strategy and carbon offset management strategies.  Matthew is a recognized thought leader in sustainable business strategy and climate change with extensive professional experience pulling together and leading international multi-disciplinary teams on climate change consulting projects.  Awarded the Zayed International Prize for the Environment for Scientific and Technological Achievements in Environment in 2006, Matthew has also initiated, developed and led a wide range of competitive national and international projects in academia and the public sector focused on cutting edge climate change and sustainability issues.  He has expertise in negotiating and finalizing multi-party carbon market transactions.

Dr. Max Moritz

Affiliation: UC Berkeley

Title: Extension Specialist & Adjunct Associate Professor

Email: http://nature.berkeley.edu/moritzlab/moritzcv.htm

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Max Moritz has research expertise in wildfire, biogeography, climate change, and spatial analysis.  Max is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley and is California’s Cooperative Extension Specialist on fire-related issues.  Max received his Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara and previously was faculty at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo.  Max regularly integrates scientific findings into the public realm, speaking to and joining forces with a variety of stakeholders to help develop solutions to various fire-related problems.  In 2005, Max co-founded the Center for Fire Research and Outreach at Berkeley (http://firecenter.berkeley.edu) which has become a focal point for disseminating fire-related data and information in California.  He actively publishes his research in peer-reviewed journals (>25 articles), gives dozens of presentations each year, and participates in several academic and governmental decision-making committees (e.g., the California Climate Action Team Report to Governor Schwarzenegger and the Legislature, the Steering Committee for the California Fire Plan).  Understanding fire regimes as a complex phenomenon, driven by a variety of biotic and abiotic factors, Max’s research focus has been to quantify the relative importance of these various factors.  An emphasis has been on the chaparral shrublands of California, and this has recently been expanded to a variety of spatial scales, from ecoregions of California up to the continental US.  Max’s latest work explores global fire patterns and how they will shift under climate change.  These modeling and mapping methodologies are integral to answering questions that require quantitative and rigorous estimates of fire activity.

Dr. Malcolm North

Affiliation: US Forest Service (PSW) & UC Davis

Title: Research Forest Ecologist & Affiliate Professor

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Dr. North is a Research Forest Ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station, and an Affiliate Professor of Forest Ecology, Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis.  He received his Master of Forest Science at Yale University and his Ph.D. in Forest Ecology from the University of Washington. He has worked on research examining the carbon dynamics of fuels treatments and wildfire, and different management practices on forest structure, composition and function.   He has also worked for USAID on developing guidelines for fostering REDD (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) projects in Southeast Asia.  His lab (students and postdoc) primarily focus on forest and fire ecology of Sierra Nevada mixed-conifer forest  (http://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/affiliates/north/Malcolm.html).